Vacation day 11: Ghost Town Museum and Garden of the Gods.

Up and at 'em, ready to hike, we opened our hotel room window. Uh oh. Rain. Plan B?

Katie had seen a brochure for the Ghost Town Wild West Museum, and since it was close (and indoors), we figured we'd swallow our skepticism and give it a shot.

We expected to find a few cheesy mannequins and skimpy storefronts, but we were pleasantly surprised to see the place filled with all kinds of artifacts.
FILLED! This general store was just packed with all kinds of period pieces. It reminded me of the Brookshire's museum back in Tyler that has an old 1920s store display.


There were several storefronts set up, including a blacksmith and my favorite, the print shop:

Barber shop:

Drugstore:

Post office/depot:

Saloon:

In the saloon we watched movies on the old "peep show" machines. (Yes, we let the kids watch the racy flicks: girls spinning around in flimsy dresses! Naughty, naughty!)

We also watched the Chaplin and western peep shows. Really cool to see these forerunners of the motion picture! In other parts of the museum we saw peep show machines with slideshows that would tell stories. One particular slideshow had photos from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
Another test of strength! Between this museum and Arcade Amusements, we really got lots of hands-on time with these old games and machines.


While we were there, Katie and I had a wanted poster and a newspaper printed with our names on them.
We got way too much enjoyment out of this silly mirror:
After walking through the domestic life part of the museum, we ventured out into the drizzle so the kids could pan for gold.
We weren't too optimistic that the kids would find much in that muddy mess!
But wouldn't you know it, Katie managed to find a speck of gold dust!

After that worthwhile excursion, the rain had slowed enough for us to make our way to Garden of the Gods.


We're so glad the weather cooperated because we really wanted to explore this park.

The Kissing Camels

We didn't have as much time at Garden of the Gods as we would've preferred, but we're happy we had an hour to at least walk around these incredible sandstone formations before moving on to our next destination: Pikes Peak.