abandoned quarry Occoneechee Mountain State Park

Here are some of the pictures from when we visited the quarry. I will be studying the quarry in greater detail for a group project in one of my classes, so there may be more to come. They're not in any particular order.

Heidi rode in the backpack on Ryan's back while we walked out to the quarry, but once Ryan started boulder hopping he decided to take her off and we took turns keeping the kids out of trouble.

Kevin did a good job walking the whole way himself.

Here's a view showing most of the quarry. All of the boulders fell off the mountain in a landslide in 2001. Some of them are huge--like a couple of feet taller than Ryan.

Yes, it really does look pink. If you pull a piece off (which you can do with bare hands because it's so soft) you can see that it has white, red and black layers. The white is probably pyrophyllite and the rest probably has a lot of iron.

Here's a hand sample of that pink stuff. This is the broken off part, so you can see all the black and red that's inside.

Some interesting artwork.

Heidi was pretty excited to get to walk back part of the way by herself. Kevin had been pretty slow on the way down to the quarry, but by this point he got his second wind and we could barely keep up with him.

Did I mention Heidi was having a good time when we let her walk instead of ride?

Kevin and Heidi love rivers. Their favorite part was when we let them go up close to the Eno River, which flows past the bottom of the quarry, and throw sticks and rocks in (with close supervision).