Fall Hikes - Varied Terrain

As beautiful Indian Summer weather has returned, the hiking group traveled to
Philipsburg, once a mining town & now a farming community & tourist town. We "hiked" around this quaint town with its many historic buildings now housing gift shops, the sapphire gallery & the Sweet Palace candy store. I learned that sapphires & rubies are both aluminum oxide crystals. All the colors except red are considered sapphires, whereas rubies are the red ones. Did you know that the next hardest substance after diamonds is sapphires/rubies? They are harder than stainless steal. My birthstone is a sapphire, so I own a star sapphire ring. Guess I won't worry about scratching it anymore. I bought some chocolate truffles & a chocolate-caramel Bear Paw to take home to Louis, my chocoholic sweetie - even though the candy store is known more for its homemade taffy.

This building, housing about 30 swallow nests, looked like an old time saloon on the bottom floor & a boarding house or place for "ladies of the evening" on the top floor.

Philipsburg is located on the outskirts of the Pintler Mountain Range. We entered the foothills above Philipsburg to find the ghost town of Granite, where millions were made mining silver.

We explored the mills, the mining shafts and what remained of the town of Granite that once housed around 5000 people during the height of the mining days.

The buildings were not built to last long, but some tin-roofed shacks are still standing.