The Wild, Wild West
Well the Jones Family foosball championships were heating up this morning with Sam taking on his dad in a thrilling nail-biter; Ross victorious with a close 10-9 on the scoreboard. Toby had thought that Ross would just be cannon fodder but to his old man’s credit, he smashed him in a convincing win that no-one saw coming. Molly and Toby were evenly matched with Maisy holding her own (as long as everyone toned it down a bit!) No-one toned it down for me, mind you, but they were happy to laugh at my technique (which admittedly is a little unconventional). For some reason I can’t seem to keep my feet on the ground. I reckon foosball is a lot harder than it looks.
We all had a history lesson this morning when we strolled through and explored the immaculately restored historic mining town of South Park, which has been set up as an open museum. With all the buildings in the street original, most of which are still standing in the very place they were built back in the mid-1800s, a walk through gave us such a great idea of what life was like back in that time in the Rockies. There was a mine with all of its original equipment and rail cars, a general store and drug store completely stocked with authentic produce, fully furnished typical homes from that time including a hotel and a trapper’s shack. There was a plethora of stuffed deer (and other hairy, big-horned mammals’) heads adorning the walls of the 30 something buildings in the town, which was mildly disturbing. Business must have been booming for the town taxidermist back in the day!
The “museum” is completely interactive and you are able to walk through every room, sit on the chairs, turn the butter churn, type something up on an old typewriter, play the piano and climb aboard the steam train. We were back in Little House On the Prairie! The original school house was there with all its old desks, blackboard, slates and books. It dawned on us that Maisy had never even been in a classroom with a blackboard! We were even allowed to climb into the covered wagons (totally Little House On the Prairie!) Again, it was just so much like a theme park, it didn’t feel real though it was. We felt like we were in the Wild, Wild West at Movie World. There were literally thousands of artifacts and pieces of history. The girls loved all the old hand-embroidered clothes and the fancy lace-up boots. There was a toy shop with an enormous number of antique toys. That alone was just incredible! To top it all off, the little town is surrounded by the awesome and imposing Rocky Mountains. What a backdrop! South Park Museum was definitely worth the visit.
In our typical fashion, we had wanted to go zip-lining (flying fox-ing) today but hadn’t bothered to book in or even enquire about where or when we could go. We took the winding road back to Buena Vista and arrived just in time to discover that the last zip line tour for the day had left 5 minutes ago. There’s a lesson there for everyone.
All was not lost! At least we got to enjoy the scenery along the way and get some fabulous photo opportunities. We hopped back in the car and wound around beautiful scenic bends down to the gorgeous little town of Breckenridge. The Collegiate Mountain Range, with mountains named after all the famous American universities (Mt Princeton, Mt Harvard, Mt Yale etc.) had traces of snow right on their summits but were mostly blanketed in green. We were imagining just how different but equally striking these vast slopes would be in winter, covered in white. You could see the lines of pine trees that form the boundaries for all the ski runs coming all the way down the mountains. It looked a bit like a golf course, with patches of snow the bunkers. A bit of a slope-y course though!
We fell in love with Breckenridge! Being only half an hour from Fairplay , we were surprised at how much more populated and lively it was than our sleepy little town. The main street is lined with upmarket shops, all with cute historic shopfronts. Everywhere you look there are buckets, pots and hanging baskets full of the most beautiful brightly coloured flowers. I found myself wanting to take photos of every little bunch they were so pretty!
The weather here in the Rockies is extremely unpredictable and we encountered absolutely torrential rain on our drive home! It was hard to even see the car in front of us. While we’ve been driving, we’ve listened to our fair share of American radio during all of our road trips the last couple of weeks and we’ve found they only have about 10 songs that they just rotate over and over again, on EVERY station! The only station with a bit of variety is the “Elvis Station” which just plays back to back Elvis tracks all day. Let’s just say those 10 songs on high rotation will form the soundtrack to our trip whether we like it or not!
Tonight we arrived back in town to sample the locally renowned Italian restaurant, Millonzi’s. It turns out there was somewhat of a Biker Convention going on today in Fairplay, the street lined with motorbikes of all shapes and sizes, and the place was packed to the rafters with long beards, leather vests and ponytails. It also happened to be happy hour (2 drinks for the price of 1) when we arrived (sodden from our dash from the car – all the way being chased by a big dog!) and Millonzi’s was pumping! There was ditty singing, raucous laughter and loud banter so loud we could barely hear each other from across the table and then at 6pm, on the dot, happy hour was over and they all vanished. Just like that. In a flash!
We had a great dinner together, enjoying each other’s company but it was tinged with emotion knowing that it was our last dinner together as a family before Ross, Molly, Toby and Maisy fly home tomorrow afternoon.
