WanderingGarden: Mountains.

Pete and Sarah said that if they were making a cross country trip to Denver than they needed to make it to the mountains at least once. We squeezed a trip in on Monday afternoon. What we did was visit a gold mine and learn how to pan for gold. Now for those of you who are not from Colorado that may seem like a normal thing to do, but it isn't. Not for someone who has been raised in the mountains. See, only the tourists do goofy things like visit the gold mines and try panning for gold at the tourist traps. And we are not tourists. I grew up with this goofy mentality that I was not a tourist (as though tourism was bad). I had a tough time when I visited Chile after college - I couldn't even pretend to be local there and had to deal with my issues. :o) Anyhow, we were trying to find something to do with 8 children ages 5 and under, and evidently in May most of Colorado is shut down - no trains running, nothing. So we ended up going to visit the Argo mine in Idaho Springs. We got to see some great stones, see the equipment demonstrated, take a bus up the hill, tour a little mine shaft, see the opening where the tunnel is (now collapsed) that drained water from the hundreds of mines in this particular mountain and brought out their ore, tour the gold mill/museum, and learn how to pan for gold (or if you are little - play in the trough of water and dirt). We had a great time. For several of the kids their favorite thing was the bus ride. My cousins, Andy, Debra and Ethan all came along. Afterwards we climbed on a train and walked around a little bit before having a late dinner at Beau Jo's pizza (good food, slower than slow service - not good w/ 8 little ones, found out we can order ahead next time). Here are a pictures from our trip:

We had good friends of Abby's host us (Thank you, Jamie and JK), but some nights we got in so late that we just put all the kids to bed at Abby's house anyway. The 2 boys slept on the same bed: