A long awaited weekend…

I am happy to report that this weekend was very enjoyable.  We got up to the cabin to find it was WAY up in the mountains… at around 9,200 ft.  It was so isolated and peaceful, we only saw two other vehicles go by the cabin all weekend.  The deck overlooked the mountains and we were up very close to the end of the treeline so it was quite picturesque.  We spent most of Friday night and all of Saturday just lazing around the cabin and relaxing.

The stars were incredible… the Milky Way looked like a highway in the sky, and I could see so many stars that it was very difficult to make out constellations.  I totally get how people go up into the wilderness and come back inspired to write books and poems about natural beauty.

On Sunday we got a touch of cabin fever, so we ventured out to Cripple Creek, CO.  We went originally so the girls could peruse the local shops and maybe get a lunch out, but while we were eating at Ruby Tuesday Tasha thought it might be fun to take their narrow gauge railroad historical tour.  It was SO COOL!  We got a healthy dose of local history, including seeing the remains of gold mines.  The train conductor informed of the names and history of many of the mines as we passed by, remarking casually that certain mines would pull $1-$2 million in gold and a few hundred yards away another might pull $10 million.  Near the end of the tour, the conductor told us that the dollar amounts that he quoted were actual dollar amounts at the time the gold was taken out when it averaged around $25/oz.  Now gold goes for around $1,200/oz, which means this place generated a LOT of money.

At the top of the tour was a modern mine still owned by the same company, which uses a high-tech cyanide slurry solution to isolate the gold.  Last year it pulled out $291 million.  Incredible.

The only downside of the weekend was the forced chores that came at the end.  You see, the cabin rental company required us to leave the cabin in “ready to rent” condition so we had to do a bunch of cleaning to ensure we got our security deposit back.  It was still very worth it… taking the time to relax and go slow is really important and something I had been sorely neglecting.