Sometimes The Pony gets to deliver in Backroads. One of the routes take him past the DMV, and what has become an unfortunate landmark. I first mentioned this new landmark back in 2019. Now it's back!
It's a sinkhole of sorts. Back in 2019, it was in the news because SMOKE was billowing out of it. I don't recall the specifics. I just know that it goes pretty deep, down to the old lead mine that runs under most of Backroads. In the background here, you can see what USED TO BE a daycare center! Which was still in operation when that hole burst into flames. They have since closed.
Here's another angle from slightly up the hill, with the DMV parking lot in the background.
"Has the sinkhole they capped looked like this long?"
"I don't pay much attention, but you'd think I'd notice if it was open again!"
"A week has gone by since my first picture, and I don't think they've done anything to it. Could fit an entire dumpster down in it!"
"Stay away! The whole thing could collapse! You could fall into a tour group in the mine!"
I don't think The Pony will get too close. As he's said, he doesn't feel like he should park his LLV by the DMV to get a picture on work time.
At least there's that chain link fence now, and not just the orange webbing that they used to block it off before they capped it. Unsuccessfully...
I think I'd find the sink hole more interesting then a tour of a lead mine.
ReplyDeleteJacques Cousteau might have begged to differ.
DeleteYou can only fall (or not) into a sinkhole. But in the lead mine, you ride in a boat past all the old abandoned mining equipment. Or so I hear. I've never taken the tour.
Perhaps you would just like to keep your feet on the surface, and stay out of the underworld.
There are 16,000 sinkholes, at least, in Missouri. I like a place not prone to collapsing beneath me.
ReplyDeleteWe have 3 that we know of! One out at the end of the driveway, a smaller one with the bottom filled in, making it a 6-foot-deep hole, and one that nobody has found the bottom of, despite the former land-owner lowering a teenager down on a rope!
DeleteYou'd think they'd make more effort to cap it, or fence it better, or something. How does one cap a sinkhole anyway?
ReplyDeleteI don't know the specifics, but I think they put a concrete cap on it before. There was something about a foam they used, which was having a chemical reaction and making the smoke. I can't get into that link anymore, because they've put up a paywall. I think I get 3 free articles a month, and I've already used mine! I'd subscribe to this paper, but they want a link to a bank account, to take payments out monthly. Nope.
DeleteThis makes me glad I moved to my mountain!! Sinkhole vs Avalanche? There is no place that is not prone to something.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was thinking: tornado, hurricane, flood, drought, tsunami, wildfire, volcano, heat wave, blizzard, air quality alert, plague of locusts...
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