I met Melinda and her family on Monday for Memorial... I mean Labor Day :). That really was an accident, but it made me laugh, so I guess I'll leave it in. They picked me up at my place and then we drove to Silver City. Ever heard of it? It's a ghost town near the Oregon border, and in its prime in the 1880's around 2,500 people lived there. I read that at least sixty million dollars’ worth of gold and silver were mined. Can you imagine what that would be worth at today's prices?! It's such a remote location and really difficult to get there it's a wonder anyone found any silver in the first place. The first hour was good road but windy (as in it winds around a lot). Isn't that how you spell windy? Or is that windy (as in the wind is blowing really hard). Now I'm confused. The last hour was a dirt road (and so is the town), but really beautiful countryside. The area is really mountainous. We had good road until the turn off to the current mine and then we had 30 miles of dirt road. They still have dirt roads in the town and no electricity or running water. We had a picnic at the park which consisted of about 12 horseshoe stands. Weird. And no grass. Not so weird given we were pretty high in the mountains and there were not very many flat places.
The buildings were pretty cool. There was a bad wild fire at the turn of the century and cleared out a lot of the wood homes left over from when Silver City was booming. The rest are mostly in disrepair, but a few had been restored or in the process of restoration. Because everything is private property were weren't able to go in the church or the school house which were my favorite places, but we did get some fun pictures. Walking up to the cemetery. I told the kids, I'd buy them a treat for the person who found the oldest grave. 1856! That's pretty old! I've been walking more since moving to Boise, and I've found that I can walk up to two miles! Most times I regret it on the second day, but eventually I hope I work up my endurance and to strengthen my legs and feet. This one I definitely felt the next day, but it was worth it! I loved the school house. It was so pretty and HUGE. It's the only thing left in Silver City that I thought it was a big town. I just read that they're doing an open house in 2 more weeks where they are opening about a dozen of the private homes to the public. Hmmmmm.
I told Preston that where ever I go I bring my little Boise State Bronco called Burt. He tried really, really hard to laugh at me :). I guess he isn't used to adults carrying around stuffed animals. Burt, of course, loves school!
On the ride back, Preston got car sick so we played musical chairs. Rob took the back and worked on some reports, Melinda drove, I was the co-pilot and Preston took old my seat behind me. When we got back to Boise, it was a little early for dinner so we did some window shopping. I told Melinda I couldn't tell anyone about it because I talk about food in all my emails, and she told me that they thought it would be fun if we went somewhere nice because she knew I liked food :). Made me laugh. We decided to do an early dinner and still waited for almost a half an hour. I'd have to look up what I ordered but it had chicken and pasta and it was gooooood. Thanks Wilkinsons!
After they dropped me off, I thought I'd watch a movie, but my roommate put the movies I'd pulled out to watch (how dare she clean up after me!) So I took a nap. A long one. I fell asleep immediately and woke up several hours later, ate something, took my night meds, and went back to bed. I figure I slept for close to fourteen hours. Whew! Those Wilkinsons know how to wear out a girl!
