Colorado Train Ride and Silver Mine

The Johnson side of the family got together for a reunion this week because my little brother was in Denver finishing off the things he needs to do to graduate and be a super awesome Endodontist.  He has spent a whole lot of years in school and it will be awesome for him to finish it all off and be done.  

Anyway, we pulled in on Friday and had fun at the pool and reconnecting with cousins.  Saturday, we went to Georgetown to ride the train and explore a silver mine.  It was so much fun.

 All of us felt a certain amount of pride and triumph when we were paid any sort of attention from the two littles of the group.  The kids are all growing up so fast, so we love on Steve and Alana's kids who are still small.  Allie, especially, loves them.

 The girls were reunited!

  They served snacks and drinks on the train and you'd have thought my kids had never seen food, let alone the buffet breakfast they had eaten an hour before.

 They all thought they were hot stuff drinking root beer from the bottle.

 "let's do 'cheers'"...

 We got off the train at the half way point and had a tour of the silver mine.

My kids wanted to experience what it would take to be a powder monkey.  They had kids as young as 7 working in the mine carrying the dynamite.  Crazy!  Nate can barely dress himself at 7, let alone work at a mine keeping the fire burning and lighting the fuses for dynamite!

After a little history lesson, we got our helmets on and went into the mine.

 The green in this picture is the water level.  The mine went down hundreds of feet from there.

This was called dragon's tongue.  It's evidence of the silver.
  

Robby got to assist in  holding the bar from the miner to pound into the rock.

 The rusted out machinery was really cool to see.

 It was nice and cool in the mine and all the kids loved it.

I loved the bridges and the beautiful scenery.  The train ride was just so cool! 

We were on the news...briefly.  They were doing a story for opening day.  We saw the film crews and felt very famous.  But then, when I watched the program and saw that they were doing it somewhat in response to de-railing last year, I was pretty glad I didn't know that before hopping on the train.  :)

http://kdvr.com/2018/04/28/georgetown-loop-pulls-into-the-station-for-the-season/