And this ol' beauty was just sitting alongside the road

On the way back there appeared to be cars in nearly every inside corner of the road back into civilization.. in this particular one 8 (!!) besides about 100 car tires and "general" rubbish

The skidder

Friday: moving the rig to the next site about 2 km down the road with the help of a skidder from the loggers nearby (dozer had sufferd a hydraulic hose burst and had to be repaired)

"Driving a dozer" has been ticked off my overall To Do list... Dan the Dozerman (in the picture) let me have a go at grading the road

The cement that is being pumped down the hole to seal it

Some geologist putting a gamma-ray logger in the hole; a method with which a.o. the exact position coal-rock interfaces can be accurately determined

The surface set diamond bit that drilled over 300 m

About 30 cm of coal in the core

What it is all about: the core of rock that is extracted

Pulling 300m of rods: about 100 rods to unscrew

And more goodies (and which piece of cutlery did we forget?...)

The summum of my culinary creativity halfway the day: diesel-smoked ravioli

Still smiling

Bit of rest halfway up

The creek

The water pump at the creek 400m below the rig. It takes three trips down & up a day to connect it, fuel it up and to drain it... let's consider it free fitness workouts...

Firing up the stove a bit

Preparing the site at 0700 in the morning to continue drilling

The rig: a Longyear 44 drilling 300m deep core holes to evaluate a coal seam.

"road"

Going nowhere without chains... not for snow but for 40 cm deep mud and clay in combination with steep grades. Pretty much impossible making the 25 minute trip into the woods without them.

More toys... a pretty useful one in fact to make roads in the forested hills to the designated drillsites

'Brother of the hood' with the Arctic padded coveralls

Hotel on the inside

Two local stoney toneys (possibly of feminine nature)

Our hotel (not much choice, the only one)

"Main Street" in War (of a total of about about 3 streets)... Note the Jail on the left

Made it to War. Calling it a "city" is pushing it a bit for a gathering of about 70 dwellings filled with inbred alcoholics, junks and the odd person with a job... Joey: "Must be different when your brother is also your dad and uncle..."

West Virginian people also are very good at gathering stuff (but are not so good at displaying it as Joey put it). "Stuff" can range from toys to bicicles, cars, garden furniture etc.

And what do you need a waste disposal system for when you have a river next door that floods every now and then and takes all away from your yard (including your house but you just rebuild that on exactly the same spot with the trash you find around)

People appeared to be living in houses you would not think possible in any western country and least of all in the US... Disposing of waste any further than your front yard seemed a completely new concept for many people

Wednesday morning we were sent out to "go to War". On second thought this appeared to be a village in West Virginia about 2 hours North from Wytheville where we were to go help drilling. When looking at the map we found out it was directly next to Cucumber and near Squire and Bishop.... Bill Dycus (Manager at Boart Longyear Wytheville) discribed the last half hour of the drive there a time travel back and had some other graphical stories stories about the people living there and in West Virginia in general. We thought it would all be exagerated a bit, but that proved wrong....

Tuesday: warming up for the serious work.... Loading a truck with drillrods and even liking it.

Bitta shopping at Wallmart... And what would this be?!

The Boart Longyear office in Wytheville

And the main tourist attraction

Wytheville central: one busy city....

Some serious safety training on Monday...

Just a bit a cruisin'...

And what do people hunt out here.... Bears?!...With ARCHES?!!.... Strange country... 

"Now let's see what this car can do...." 

Says it all

Shot Tower of about 150 yrs old, used to make musket bullets by pooring molten lead down the 25m of the tower + 25m of the shaft below it

Rather prettyish scenery: the New River (20 min. south from Wytheville)

Sunday afternoon I spent doing reconnecance work around Wytheville. This included a visit to the New River state park, a stretch of 46 miles (75 km) along an abandoned railroad that followed the river valley. The picknick area in the park begs for another visit to bbq the catch of the day...

View from the top of a ridge near Wytheville