Crested Butte

3 Jun 2020-Yesterday we took a ride up to Crested Butte, but before I get to that I had to post this picture from the Pioneer Museum that I overlooked the other day. This is a hair curler contraption from the 1940s...looks downright unsafe, huh?

We headed out to Crested Butte fairly early, taking Fluffy with us for a change. We don't really like leaving her alone all day...she is used to having the other dogs around all her life and not being alone, so we put her bed in the back of the car and off we went.

We saw a sign just outside town for this fish hatchery, so we pulled in to take a look. Fluffy was happy to take a look with us. Each of these "runs" can hold about 30,000 fish.

This writing tells us how the fish are raised from eggs thru release, and surprisingly how the fish return here 3 to 4 years after release to lay their eggs during spawning. I wouldn't have thought that fish would return to a hatchery to lay their eggs.

Some scenery on the way to Crested Butte.

Crested Butte is a really pretty town, very much reliant on the tourists who come here to ski in the winter or hike/bike/horseback ride/go 4-wheeling in the summer. I don't know what the knight and dragon were doing on the side of the road, but it was cute. Some of the downtown buildings date back to 1895. Again, Fluffy was loving being the tourist with us!

From Crested Butte we drove 3 miles to Mt. Crested Butte, which exists solely as a place for tourists to rent hotels/condos. It didn't seem like there were many permanent residents, and because of all the hotels it wasn't very pretty.

But from there we took a ride thru the Gunnison National Forest, which was really pretty.

There was an area where there was actually private property...I assume they were there before it was made a National Foresst, and were probably grandfathered in. I can't imagine living here, as you can see there are places where there is still snow on the ground, so they must have a hellacious winter.

About 5 miles into the forest we came to this former "Ghost Town", called Gothic, that is now used by about 60 college students and their professors during the summer doing resesrch on global warming, etc. Again, I don't know what the school zone info is about.

We started to go into what used to be the town hall and were met by Laurel, who told us that the town used to be a mining town, that it still didn't have running water, that most of the houses have outhouses, and they use solar power for whatever electricity they have.

After leaving Laurel, we proceeded along the road just admiring the scenery. Unfortunately, we had to turn around about 7 miles in because the road was blocked.

We got out of the car to take some pictures showing the snow.

And when walking around we saw what we think were bear pawprints in the ground. There were only two pawprints, so we think he was standing on his hind feet surveying the scene. haha That's Cathy running away in fear. I held my ground!

As did Fluffy! What courage!

Although she was exhausted on the drive home. Notice that she didn't even have the strength to get her whole body in her bed...poor thing!

museum

1 Jun 2010-We were a little tired today from our journey yesterday across the Himalayas (haha), so all we did was go to the Pioneer Museum in town. It was quite a museum, with 15 buildings over 6 acres, most of which were built somewhere else in the late 1800s or early 1900s and then transferred here to the museum grounds.

They had everything here, from a car museum to 2 old school houses, from churches to old log cabins, from Indian and WWII displays to whole rooms full of ladies hats or men's cowboy hats. There was so much to see, I couldn't possibly put up all the pictures I took here. So what I have tried to do today is to post some of things I have never seen before, or things that I haven't seen since I was a kid. I think you will enjoy seeing some of it.

With that in mind...please click on the video to get started:

Here is an item from the old Westerns...usually used to make a getaway!

This is my friend, Chief Ouray. The town we got our RV tire fixed was named after him. They had a big display of hatchets and arrowheads, and that is a peace pipe in the last picture, with a badger skull on the end of it.

When was the last time you saw S & H Green Stamps??? Talk about a flash from the past. They said they started selling them back in 1896, but they were most popular from 1930 to 1980. I had no idea they lasted till 1980...I would have said no later than 1970....what a trip!

Don't mean to scare you with the "W"! Read on and you will realize it has nothing to do with George Bush! haha When we pulled into town we noticed the big "W" on the side of this mountain, but it wasn't until today that we found it why it was there. As a town along the train line, every 1500 feet one of the posts was stuck in the ground so the train conductor would blow his horn. So I guess it is saluting the town as a "whistle stop" town.

Here is a whole display of beer cans...not too many museums have that, huh?!

Everyone always talks about "the good old days"...I wonder who they were good for?! haha

I forgot to turn the picture, but this guy was a "cannibal", caught in 1864. The writing on the left tells the story.

This is called a "come along", a clamp used by early day police to go around your wrist and then pull you. Anyone ever seen one of these before?

I don't know why, but it seems everywhere we have gone there are old-style wheelchairs. The one on the left is a child's chair, while the one on the right is for adults.

This is a Mormon hand cart, used from 1840-1870 by some of the 500,000 pioneers encouraged by Brigham Young to go west to the Promised Land. He found ox carts to be too expensive, so they tried these. Try to imagine yourself pulling everything you own in one of these, for a couple hundred/thousand miles, probably over mountains like we were on yesterday!

Look how long the skis on the right are. They are from 1880, and you can tell they were carved by hand.

This was one of my favorites...it is a Sno-Cat, built in 1949. Ellen and I were in a modern-day version of this when we went to Yellowstone in the wintertime back in 1988. The back has tractor legs, while the front has skis.

Here is a horse-drawn hearse from 1870.

This note tells us that springs were carried along the side of the covered wagons and then used to sleep on at night...who knew? These wagons were used between 1875-1900.

If you blow up the picture, you will see that this contraption has skis for legs...it was pulled by horses.

They had an Antique Cars building that held at least 100 cars...here are a few. The fire truck was built in 1923.

This looked like the precursor to a cab of an 18 wheeler to me...built in 1940.

And this was built in 1924.

This is an old-fashioned steam iron.

And how about this washing machine. I think I posted one of these before, but I am waiting for someone to tell if I am wrong in thinking I remember my grandmother having one of these. Didn't Nana Byrnes have one of these when we were young, Marie?

And who doesn't remember the TVs with the rabbit ears? Am I the only one whose father sometimes made us stand there holding the antenna because the picture was "just right" while we were holding it? haha

This is a mink stole...my mother had one of these that we used to terrorize the twins with...the mouth even opened, making it especially creepy! haha

This school house was built in 1919 and used till 1968. It was then, sometime later, transferred here to Gunnison, along with the merry-go-round. (I swear that's the same one we used to play on down Columbia Park.) haha And I think they stole that desk from St Augustine's grammar school...don't a lot of you remember having desks just like that!? Remember the ink wells?

I loved this! This is the list of punishments for students in 1848. They got a certain amount of "lashes", depending on the infraction. Misbehaving to Girls called for 10 lashes, while Swearing called for 8. Click on it to see how they spelled in those days...like they wrote "swaring".

This is the outhouse at the school.,which was transferred here at the same time as the school. Certainly no privacy with 3 toilets in a row.

We went to a restaurant after the museum, and because we are not into art museums, we thought we would share the western art here with you.

And I don't know why this one is different, but I saw this license plate in the parking lot...haven't seen one like it before. A lot prettier than the usual.

That was along one, but hope you enjoyed it!