Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Day 18 - Sunday


We had a family worship in this awe-inspiring setting.  It’s a great place to worship God!

Brad and the girls went fishing.  We were happy to learn that the first weekend in June every year is free fishing!  No license, no stamp required!  That was a nice treat.  I ran up to find the camp host to see if we could add one more night.  It’s just so pretty here!  And we still have things to do in town.  The camp host, Helyn Wright, talked to me for about 40 min.  She is so nice and has lots of stories and advice.  She and her husband are full time RV-ers.  (used to live in Seattle and are going back this fall to work some to pay for their new GIANT motorhome.)

Then we popped over to “town” to catch the 1:00 train.  It is the Leadville, Southern and Colorado RR that used to run between Leadville and Denver (151 miles!).  Now it just runs about 9 mi toward Denver and then reverses to head back to Leadville. It was the girls’ first time on a train.  The views were stunning and the ride was quite peaceful.  Audra was the only one who didn’t doze on the way back down.

After the train ride, we drove about 5 mi outside of town to see the first house my mom lived in here.  It is right next door to the old ranger station, which is right next to Crystal Lake.  All of this is set pretty much dead center of Mt. Elbert on the left and Mt. Massive on the right.  No wonder she misses CO!

Helyn brought us some extra kindling and lots of partially burned wood that she cleans out of peoples’ fire-rings when they leave.  She either uses it or tosses it, but thought we might like to have it.  Bonus fire tonight!!  Thanks Helyn!

Loving CO!


Leadville Train

2 comments:

  1. I love the pictures - it looks like the weather is nice? Are you going to tell us the story about the ice palace (or should we just come out to Leadville)?
    We sent the kids around to check vacated campsites for abandoned firewood. Mondays are the best - weekend campers often don't want to carry firewood home.
    Keep posting - we're reading!

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  2. Thanks for reading Katie! I knew our moms would. It's nice that our friends are! :)

    Briefly ... Leadville was a mining town that sort of blew up (in population) in the late 1800's. Eventually, the mining resources started to run out and the town was losing popularity. So they decided to build an Ice Palace for tourism and as a unique thing to get attention. They started working in Nov I think, building a wooden frame, then carved ice blocks out of snow/ice banks and began to build. It was so intricate and amazing. It had a dining hall, ice skating rink, carrousel and I can't remember what else. Unfortunately, they had an early thaw that spring and had to close in in early March . Most winters it could have stayed frozen till May. That's pretty much it. You learn lots of stuff when you travel! ;)

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