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A serendipitous detour in the desert: The Castle Dome Mining Museum

By Mike Wendland | Updated Feb 15, 2020

We love traveling serendipity style and running into out of the way museums.

Summary of this Post show

When we find something that catches our eye, we're more than willing to change directions and check it out.

That's what happened in Arizona the other day when we saw a sign for the Kofa National Wildlife Reserve and the Castle Dome Mining Museum.

We were on our way somewhere else but, hey, what's a detour?

Ten miles off the main highway (US 95 S, just northeast of Yuma), we took a dusty, washboard road to the Castle Dome Mining Museum.

We're glad we stopped – as you'll see in the video.

We toured the museum, located in a ghost town that has been restored and stocked with artifacts found scattered in the nearby desert. We got a very interesting tour of one of the abandoned mines, where we saw a rock wall made of incandescent minerals that, under a black light, emitted colors unlike anything you've ever seen before.

And the museum owner showed us numerous pair of old Levis and other jeans from the late 1890s that he claimed are worth many tens of thousands of dollars. Here's a story we did on the jeans a week or so ago – https://rvlifestyle.com/rv-serendipity-are-these-the-oldest-jeans-in-the-world/

After the museum and mine tour, we did some RV boondocking in the desert Kofa National Wildlife Refuge nearby.

Here's the video.

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Mike Wendland

Published on 2020-02-15

Mike Wendland is a multiple Emmy-award-winning Journalist, Podcaster, YouTuber, and Blogger, who has traveled with his wife, Jennifer, all over North America in an RV, sharing adventures and reviewing RV, Camping, Outdoor, Travel and Tech Gear for the past 12 years. They are leading industry experts in RV living and have written 18 travel books.

One Response to “A serendipitous detour in the desert: The Castle Dome Mining Museum”

October 24, 2020at7:10 am, RV Road Trip: 10 Best Museums in the United States [PLUS 9 More!] | RV Lifestyle said:

[…] Kofa National Wildlife Reserve and Castle Dome Mining Museum […]

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