We all slept amazingly last night. It could have been the lack of windows, cool temps, pure silence, or perhaps oxygen deprivation from being surrounded by a mountain. Whatever it was, Millie didn’t sneak into our bed until a full 12 hours after we tucked her in.

I cooked a big breakfast and then we went out to our first destination of the day: Old Timer’s Mine. We pulled up next to this mining car in the lot. I keep calling Coober Pedy an “old mining town” but today reminded us it’s still a very active mining town.

Old Timer’s Mine is a museum and opal shop all in one. It has a self-guided tour of the original mine from 1915 and a has an old dugout house, complete with the original furniture and information about the family that lived there.

Every so often they showed how the opal is embedded into the limestone rock which was super cool to see. It had a bunch of terrifying mannequins that had Millie grabbing at our thighs.

This mannequin was the scariest one but then they had a photo of the real guy and … he did kind of look like the mannequin?

Some more photos from the house:

After we were done here, the guy working at the museum told us two spots where we could go and try to find our own opals, known as “fossicking”. One was in the small pit right outside the building, and another was on a series of large mounds of sandstone that had been dug out of the mines.

It was hot and very, very sunny. High of 104 today. We lasted about 10 minutes in each location and then called it. We did find about 10 pieces of tiny opal though!

Ignore my terrible miner nails. I had just been digging in the dirt.

We attempted to go to another couple of kitschy tourist spots but they were closed. We were so overheated that we decided to head back to our own little mine. We spent the afternoon in the dark cavern that we’re staying in. We did all the usual things we do when we hang out at “home”.

The many nooks and crannies and hallways made for a very thrilling game of hide and seek.

At 6 we went out for dinner. I read about a place called the “Greek club” that is only open on Fridays, and is like a large community bbq for locals and visitors alike. Perfect. We drove over to it only to find it’s doesn’t run during the off season. Everything will be opening again in March so we are just barely missing all the action.

We went to plan b, the Italo-Australian club. Why these are Greek or Italian, I do not know. I know that our home was dug out by a Croatian miner so my guess is that these clubs were for migrant miners from Europe. Anyway, the Italian club had only two Italian things about it. 1. This floor at the entryway and 2. A woman outside playing the godfather theme on the accordion.

I immediately loved the vibe. Everyone was extremely friendly. Unfortunately they weren’t serving food (again, no food in the off season) so we just had one drink and moved on.

This guy at the bar introduced himself as James and then inexplicably kept calling Millie “Dad”.

We asked where the best place in town was and got sent to the restaurant at the “servo” which Google translated to me as service station. We drove down to the shell station and had a shockingly decent meal of lamb gyros and spaghetti. You know you’re in a small town when the best restaurant is the gas station.

Millie got her Friday Ice Cream from the freezer.

She chose the above pushpop over the Size Matters Gaytime Slab that Nick and I were pushing for.

We were amazed by the sky as we drove home past the UFO and to our cavern.