As last year, I took this day as a chance to go out on a drive with Nick and Ginny, unhindered because everyone else is working this day. This time Clara joined us. (From left to right: Ginny, Clara, Nick)
Road trip!!
Got on National Hwy 1, then onto Provincial 2B, and on the 62 Expressway, and before we knew it, we were on Coastal Hwy 2, on the northeast coast. The speed of our journey amazed us.
Inspired by my visit to the Japanese shrine in Taoyuan last week, I decided to drive us to Jinguashi, an old gold mining area. In Jinguashi are the ruins of another Japanese shrine, the Ogon Shrine (a.k.a. the Gold Temple) up on the mountain.
The bare, standing columns are reminiscent of a Greek or Roman ruin.
On the way back down, we decided go to one of the old mines that was open for tourism:
Inside are some dioramas showing the hard, sweaty labor these miners did.
As we walked down a flight of stairs to the park entrance, we passed an abandoned Japanese house. We poked around inside it and saw that it was a complete mess now, but must have looked very nice in its heyday. It looked recently abandoned (we surmise the occupants simply moved into the brand new house that was built next door). (Oh, by the way, the "orb" you see is not a ghost...it's a raindrop illuminated by my flash.)
A scene we passed as we drove along the mountain road to Jinguashi.
The hills were crisscrossed with these hulking concrete pipes that looked like something from the move Alien. We thought they were for transporting slurry down to the bottom of the hills, but then we read the sign which explained they were flue pipes for venting fumes from the smelting plant below up to the higher reaches of the hills.
Up from these pipes is a structure where apparently ore was loaded onto vehicles. We drove up to check it out and saw the remains of huge hoppers.
Later we went to Jiufen, a picturesque (but over-touristed) former gold mining town nearby.
