Today was a good day to explore.

Remember last week when I told you about going up to Błackhawk, CO to check out the mountains and the casinos? Well, someone, not saying who, but I’ll give you one guess, has been jonesing to play poker in a tournament for a long time, to just play and not run the game. There is WSP, World Series of Poker, for those of you not in the know, Poker After Dark either on the TV or DVR most nights, something had to be done about it.

Well, today, that desire was fulfilled! DCM headed up to Blackhawk to participate in a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament. Let’s just say he had an absolute blast! He didn’t have to do anything except play (normally he runs the tournaments, controls the blinds, please don’t ask me what that is! keeps track of the players, everything) and when he was through, he came in 16th out 56, not to shabby!

Well, while DCM was live out his WSP dreams, I headed in the same direction to the mountains, took a left at the sign for Idaho Springs. It was a great drive with the top down on the curvy roads, seeing the people in the water, hiking and climbing the rocks, very nice.

My first stop was the Idaho Springs visitor center. There I learned that Idaho Springs was the place where the gold rush started; they had a population. Of 14,000 and now, 2,000, it got too expensive to live there, they were hit hard with the gas shortage back in the 1970s.

They had a letter from 1924 regarding the ballot for the presidential elections 1896 and the list of nominations, amazing! There were gems and minerals from the local mines, a pricing sheet for minerals at the time, costumes for women of the day, a car, fools gold, all very interesting, I’m looking forward to going back.

I started to drive through town, decided to park and then walked around. The town was cute and charming, had a nice small town feel, lots of shops and restaurants. I walked to the end of town, then started back down the other side of the street.

I stopped at the Underhill Museum, it was a business/home that was preserved as it was back I the early 1900s. I learned about the owner of the house and his family, it was charming.
http://www.examiner.com/article/museum-monday-underhill-museum-idaho-springs

Right outside of the museum was a sweet azalea bush, ok, it might not be an azalea bush, but I’m going with it, and flying around the bush was a hummingbird moth, it was amazing, looked just like a hummingbird, but it was a moth!

I walked the full length of the town back to my car, dropped off a letter at the post office for a nice woman looking for a post box.

http://www.idahospringsco.com/

I started driving, I was going to head up to Mount Evans, but I ended up driving to Georgetown, CO, another very cute and quaint town. The great thing…as I was driving there, is saw all the signs towards the different mountains that feature…skiing! I cannot wait to get on the slopes this winter, it’s been a while!

When I was in Idaho Springs, it was warm, when I got to Georgetown, the sweatshirt came out, the temperature had dropped at least 15/20 degrees, it felt like and it was raining a bit. I did learn that even in the summer, it gets down to the 40s in Georgetown, sounds good to me!

Georgetown, like Idaho Springs, which I didn’t mention, the main “drag” is about three to five blocks and just as charming as it could be! I found free parking, wahoo and got out to walk around. Right where I parked was the Hotel de Paris.

The Hotel de Paris museum that was a hotel that dated back to the mining boom with a first class French restaurant, showroom for traveling salesmen, and high dollar patrons in the hotel. The owner, Louis Dupuy, was an interesting man, had quite the checkered past! One of the really interesting things was that he didn’t have any family, so he left the estate to his main, Sophie, who he was very close with and since she was illiterate and couldn’t run the business, she was so stressed out, she died four months after he did!

There was only one way to tour the museum, guided tour, the reason, everything was open and very few things were roped off and everything was original to the museum, the only thing that had been replaced was the carpet in one room and some of the support beams in the basement.

It was a great learning experience! They had some great features like the hide-away beds that folded to look like dressers, so cool! Louis Dupuy even had his own ranch with cattle and once a week would go to his ranch, slaughter her own cattle and serve it in his restaurant, talk about full service!
I highly recommend this tour if you have the opportunity.

Home

Since the tour started at 3, I had some time to kill, so I walked around town, into some of the shops and galleries,and after the museum, I walked the rest of the town. I didn’t buy very much in either town, but in Georgetown, I did buy some local honey, it’s some thing I like to buy when I travel.

I treated myself to a cup of hot tea, it was definitely needed and a homemade peanut butter cup, yum!
http://www.town.georgetown.co.us/

After walking around a bit more and chatting with some of the people in town, I headed home, a beautiful drive, incredibly scenic.