We opened up our rockhounding book and set off to find the fabled "Apache Tears" - according to native american legend when a local tribes warriors were killed in combat (I think fighting the Americans) all of the women and children of the village went to a hill and began to cry. Legend has it that their tears turned into small pieces of obsidian. According to the book, a local mine allowed tourists to, for a fee, collect the apache tears. We got to superior and found a very small, but very scenic mining town at the base of a majestic mountain range. We seemed to miss the cryptic directions to the apache tears mine so we decided to stop into a gas station and ask for directions. The person behind the counter unfortunately told us that the "old apache tears mine" closed ten years ago. We gave up on finding the mine and instead headed up into the mountain range seen in this picture. We drove for about half an hour and passed another mine I had heard of adjacent to a state park. It looked like the mine was still active so we never made it to the summit. We did find some pieces of what looked like iron ore off the side of the road. On the way back home we tried once again to find the abandoned Apache Tears mine. Where we think it used to be we found an open pit quarrie where it looked like they were mining something that looked like gypsum. We took a small piece from the side of the road and headed home. Although we never found exactly what we were looking for we had a great day.
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