Leadville

We took a day trip up to Leadville this afternoon---to see the historic area of town and to go through the mining museum. Kids have now been "in" a prospector's cave, and in a more modern coal mine (with all the drilling and blasting and low ceiling tunnels, etc). Everything was SO short ceiling-ed! My brother-in-law commented that when they were looking at mountain cabins for sale many of them had originally been miner's cabins and the ceilings were claustrophobic-ly low. (They didn't buy one of those...) Anna has now decided she wants to be a miner...I didn't bother to tell her they never let women in real mines because of superstition that it is an ill-omen.

Even better than the destination, was the absolutely stunning mountain views :-) Row after row of peaks, pine covered in front, all snow covered behind, many times surrounding us on all sides. The town was at 10,000+ feet in a valley area. I ended up dizzy and lightheaded plus nauseous---somewhat helped when we finally ate dinner at a "miners' cafe" but not totally feeling better til we got down to "lower elevations" of Denver (only 5,000 ft, after all...)