Nevadaville & Central City

Nevadaville, Colorado was once a gold mining town but is now pretty much a ghost town.  Its claim to fame is that it was the location of the first lode gold.  We drove to see it because it had a couple of geocaches hidden there.  I have to say that it was pretty cool to walk around the old town.  It only stretches about 2 blocks in length along a dusty road in the mountains.

We grabbed a couple of caches, one of which was hidden in an old crumbling wall.

We saw no ghosts but Mr. Chipmunk came out to investigate and see what we were up to.

After that we decided to run over to Central City and check out the casino's.  Central City is another historic mining town from the mid 1800's.  The old buildings were fabulous to see and there is a lot of renovation going on.  We breezed into one of the casino's, played on the slots for awhile (where I won a whopping
$ 8.00) and we were back out the door and on our way.

Before we left town we stopped and grabbed a geocache by their main sign.

After that we headed back up into the mountains.  There are old cemeteries scattered here and there.

 I particularly liked the old family plots that were surrounded by low brick walls or wrought iron fencing. 

Years of neglect have allowed trees to take root in the plots.  I love to wander through the cemeteries and look at the old headstones and the inscriptions. 

There were hundreds of old trees with carvings on them.

My favorite thing is when we come across old buildings or crumbling sections of them.  I can't help but check them out.

We even came across the remains of an old gold mining chute....

This was pretty cool - the gates to this cemetery had been chained and locked, so somebody just built a bridge up over the fence...

By then we were all starving, so we drove to Idaho Springs to a great little restaurant called "Beau Jo's."

BeauJo's is located in an historic building.

The whole town was just a really neat little area of cool shops and restaurants.  We strolled in and out of many of them while we waited 35 minutes for our table.

BeauJo's is famous for their "Mountain Pies" and they did not disappoint!

After you eat the gooey pizza center, you're supposed to eat the thick outside crust dipped in honey.  Sounds kind of strange, but it was actually really good.

On our way home we were blessed with a DOUBLE rainbow.  It's a little hard to see in the picture, but take my word for it - it's there.

I always feel that rainbows are special and lucky.  This is the first time I've ever seen a double.  Maybe that means something really special is going to happen!