Day Trip

My brother is visiting town and drug the girls and I away from my plans to sand the deck today. So after spening all morning running to freight took stores looking for the right air tools, I blew it all off and we took off into the high mountain desert (oximoron?) to a ghost-town which is no longer a ghost-town, interesting! Built around an old abandoned gold mine, the town had a comeback with retirees looking for the perfect small town and oh boy did they ever find it. Built between two mountains in a very very narrow crevice, the town has room for two long streets of custom houses built between refurbished old old old homes and RV lots. Most residents ride ATV's rather than drive the 10 mile an hour speed limit. Fun. Old peeps rock, especially those who have a custom built ATV with a car seat for the dog in their life. (no pics of that, that would be rude without permission)

Interestingly enough, this old phone booth (still works!!!) was a huge draw. Seems they get snowed in often in the winter and landlines don't work but through the grace of God and mabell, this one does. The kids took a million shots in this thing! Oh and the phone book had 28 residents listed, fun fact.

Even though the mom part of me screamed "Danger!", the other part of me thought it cool that they've left the tracks and carts and other mining dodads up in the mountain sides above the town. Thank God the kids were in flip flops otherwise they were totally planning on hiking up to ride in a railroad cart. OMGawd......

We got there just in time for one of the owners of the restored cabins/houses to give us a tour (okay, she was giving her friends a tour and we tagged along with an invitation), Duchess quickly made her way to the front of the line with her stinkey, touchey everything fingers and endless questions: where is the potty? where is the bed? were they poor? why did they only have one room? blah blah blah..... the most interesting part though was my brother and me, I'm almost ashamed to admit that we got the bug....

Every little cabin was different, the first we saw was a shoe repair...not much in there to ohhh over so we moved on to the post office. Where we both immediately went into ........OMG's.... cause the old mail boxes built into the wall were originals from the early 1900's, teeeny tiny little bronze boxes. Exact copies of the ones that were in my mom's hometown, which we visited often as kids. By the time we were kids, there was one store and the remains of the post office. Where you walked onto a little porch and there were all these little bronze boxes with names of people who'd been dead awhile. Fascinating......especially since it was exactly 7 miles from where we lived in town. So that was quite the deal. Then I tried to buy the buffet they had in there gathering dust and she kept laughing me off. Dude, I was serious.

Duchess finally got to see the potties. She was sooooooooooo not impressed.

But I was mucho impressed with this one. Snicker. We totally need one of these at work, even though we aren't miners!

But they real nice public potties. This was one end of the ladies room. Once you get past the cutey on the bench and the antique vanity in the PUBLIC RESTROOM, notice how clean it was. Then notice my to-die-for-new-purse, my bday gift from my mommy. I dig it and it looks so good on my shoulder!

Then it was Princess' turn to pose. So cute!

Along the way we stopped by the actual boarded up mine to mountain gaze and take a pic on the side of the road. Since we were literally in the middle of no where, I was totally packing....my gun that is. Safety first.

But all too soon it started to rain, and once we talked that damn cow out of the middle of the road, we came home where the sun was shinning and I worked on the deck. The not so perfect ending to a perfect day. It could have been worse, I could have been hog hunting......with him.

Posted in: family smamily