Desert Adventures, Vail

About Desert Adventures

Desert Adventures in Vail, Arizona offers tours of a 150-year-old hard rock silver mine located about 20 minutes south of Tucson. Visitors descend 125 feet down a rope into the mine shaft to reach the Blue Room, named for the natural blue mineralization on its walls. Using hammers and chisels, guests extract mineral specimens and silver ore directly from the walls and natural cavities to take home. The mine tour includes a horizontal shaft exit back to the surface. From the mine entrance at 5,000 feet elevation, visitors overlook 500 square miles of conservation land. After the underground tour, guests travel by ATV to nearby mine tailings piles to collect crystals and minerals, then continue to the Flats, an area with perennial water flow where additional exploration continues. Children as young as five have completed the mine tour. The location sits four miles into a canyon off the main road in Vail.