Honeymoon Day 3: Ride the Line!
On day 3 of our honeymoon we said goodbye to cabin #1 and traveled to our home for the second half of our trip. But we couldn't just go straight there -- we had to take the scenic route! After some extensive pre-research (presearch?) I discovered that a route through the mountains also happens to take us through several can't-miss attractions, including a few we didn't even plan on!
Our first stop was to find a post office to mail some postcards. We saw a sign for "Ward Post Office" and hung a left. We found ourselves in Ward, Colorado (population 150 in the 2010 census). It is considered a ghost town by some, but they at least had a functional post office. I bravely fought off the vicious coyotes and delivered our post cards!
We got back to civilization -- well, back to paved roads -- and headed to our first stop, Georgetown. The town, like Ward before it, and several other towns we would see later, was a former mining town. The main attraction, and the reason we were there, was the Georgetown Loop Railroad. We took a trip on the train out to an old silver mine, then we got a tour of the mine itself.
We refueled with some lunch at Euro Grill (now closed, unfortunately... and we didn't get any pictures of the food, either).
After lunch we and continued along the mountain ridge. On our way to our next stop we passed through Breckenridge. Even though it was nice and sunny, it was clear that they had gotten a lot of snow recently! Oh, and we saw a moose.
Our next stop: South Park City (no relation to the TV show).
Sigh, Dammit, Kenny!
Anyway, other than the single depiction from the show (which was technically outside the museum), this South Park is a recreation of a stereotypical frontier mining town. All of the buildings are authentic (though moved in from other locations) and they were jam-packed with artifacts.
We got there a few hours before closing, and I guess they keep that 5pm closing time on the dot. As the clock approached 4:45 we started getting followed by a helpful employee who wanted to make sure we knew the place closed soon.
By that point we had had a long enough day, so we drove to our shelter for the night. We got lost a few times along the way (Colorado mountain roads can be a little confusing... and intimidating when you are in a sports car), but finally found what we were looking for. Sort of. We immediately realized this was not the quaint cabin we left earlier. Even though the roads were a lot less paved (we initially thought we weren't going to be able to get into the drive; luckily they had two driveways and the second was more accessible), the cabin itself didn't feel as... cabin-y. The trees were a lot more sparse, the neighbors were a lot closer, and the interior was more bland.
But there was at least a roof and a bed, so it would do for a few days. We stopped for dinner at McGinty's Wood Oven Pub (dreading going back out the rain-soaked dirt roads), then settled back in for the night.
Oh, one last quick shot before I go. One thing that really amazed me about Colorado was how different the terrain could get with just a short drive. The first half of our trip was all snow-covered mountains:
And then after a while we saw some real snow-covered mountains:
And then after South Park it pretty much all flattened into wide-open plains:
That's all for now. Until next time!
