I like this block explorer run by a long time community member, it even has a rich list!  http://moneroblocks.info/

Explore.MoneroWorld.com easily shows the mem pool.  http://107.172.25.35:8081/

Transferring many inputs costs more but a fee of 1.26 is rather large.  The 175 coins must of consisted of many inputs.  The greater the mixin selected also increases the fee but I believe not by too much.

I took most of my coins out of 2 MyMonero accounts with each transfer consisting of 15 to 20 inputs resulting in a fee of ~0.15 for each of the 2 transfers and I thought that was a lot.  mixin was 6

Monero users are strongly incented to use a single wallet over a long period of time while never drawing it down too low. You should try to avoid "scraping the bottom of the barrel" so to speak. Those small inputs that become a liability when ever you are trying to scrape them togather to form a large transaction are actually an asset when used in a wallet with more funds. They help you find efficient ways to make the change that you need to make a payment.

Think of it like coins irl. It's a pain in the ass when you are trying to pay for an entire meal with it but helpful when used in conjunction will bills to make proper change.

All i know is all the XMR i mined is totally worthless to me because of the micro payments made to my by the mining pool! 

You paid a 50% fee?

Do you remember which OS the wallet was created on? If so, download the binaries [here]here for that same OS. Extract the binaries, go to the extracted folder and open bitmonerod (the daemon). Bitmonerod first has to sync fully before you are able to restore your wallet. If bitmonerod is fully synced (you can check this by typing "status" into bitmonerod, it should be equal to the blockheight displayed on moneroblocks.info), place the wallet.bin, wallet.bin.address.txt, and wallet.bin.keys in the same folder as bitmonerod and simplewallet are located. Subsequently, open simplewallet and type in the wallet's name. Simplewallet will automatically update you to a new version and you should be able to see your coins (and transact with them).

Sidenote: if you need help with setting up bitmonerod and simplewallet, you can follow these guides:

https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/blob/master/knowledge-base/user-guides/create_wallet.md

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/user-guides/simplewallet).

Following.

It seems that now most pools have 0.5 minimum payouts and others have 0.2 or 0.3.  I am on a pool that has 1.0 minimum payouts and it was set this way with the problem of fees in mind.  It is run by a trusted member of the community.

http://mine.moneroworld.com/#

bump

Although I did not seem to me that I was scraping the bottom of the barrel I did move most of my coins off.  One was a long time wallet with significant activity and the other was relatively new with this being the first withdrawal.  No transaction were particularly small.  I believe the fees were 0.17 for the old wallet and 0.13 for the new wallet, about 20 and 15 inputs respectively.