Mining for Thundereggs in the Ochocco Mts. at Lucky Strike Mine

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mining for thunder eggs, goggles and pics required.




Here we are meeting Kop, the claimee to this Lucky Strike Mine. He is the owner of two other mines also.



We let the boys take their bikes off the car and ride down the mountain, only about a mile once we hit pavement again. It was a great way to get the wiggles out and it was all down hill.

Now this was a real adventure! We drove which seemed like forever, but was only about 15 miles into the mountains at the Ochocco Summit looking for the Lucky Strike Mine. We wanted to find our own thunder eggs, and we did! The owners of the mine, Kop and Cindy were friendly, unique, and very willing to talk. We listened mostly and watch Kop look at each egg we mined. He let us know which were real thungereggs and which just needed to be tossed, or were just rock. It was quite the experience, meeting this old timer, he had a lot of stories to tell. The road to get us there was treacherous in our toyota van, but she made it! At one point after we had arrived at the mine, we had to back down a road and walk instead, since it was to rough to drive on. I love these off the beaten path tourist experiences. I don't think this is a typical tourist stop, we found it online and heard about it from our friend Cynthia. Some of the people searching for rocks and gems, were very serious about it. We we just in it for the experience and for the boys to see where the real thunder eggs came from. The boys will often get sucked into the gift shops at different stops on our travels and always want to buy the same things...thunder eggs, polished rocks, or arrowheads. So this time they got the real thing. A great time. Cindy then told us that the little town of Mitchell had free camping in its city park, so we drove on down the road and spent the night at Mitchell in the park.