Headed Out West For Father's Day...

For Father's Day Ben decided he wanted to go visit an old west town... a lot of us around here think he's been playing maybe a little too much Red Dead Redemption as of late, but whatever... it was his special day, plus it got us all out of the house for a really fun afternoon that we might not have done otherwise. We ended up in a little old town called Calico. It was back in it's day (1881) an extremely prosperous silver mining town, turned ghost town (1904), turned theme parkish restoration project (1951 - thanks to Mr. Knott of the Knott's Berry Farm fame) and then finally turned county regional park (1966). Actually getting to Calico took a little while (it's half way between LA and Vegas...around 2 hours), but it was pretty cool driving through the desert and seeing parts of our state we'd never even see before. The town of Calico was a mix of original buildings (around 5 of them), restored ones built from old photographs, and then just weird, quirky attractions built in by Mr. Knott... so the place kinda had this weird vibe of a cool, old, authentic, ghost town mixed in with an abandoned, old, theme park. It's totally worth the visit though, especially if you're on your way to or from Vegas. I think Ben and I want to go to Bodie next, since we both loved all the old historic aspects about Calico and not so much the added on stuff.

The entrance to Calico

Lizzie and Ben looking for the horses, which unfortunately were no longer there.

The old school house... this was a rebuilt building, but still had a ton of original artifacts inside. The school also doubled as a church on Sundays... who knew that's were the term sunday school came from. Ben and I never really put the two together until then.

Inside the school... wish I would have taken more pictures of the inside of stuff. I didn't realize how well you could see them until we got home.

An old house built under the cliff of a rock

In the pottery shop ( I did say it was mix theme park, right) the girls were making a horse medallion.

Panning for some gold...

The actual old, original saloon. The smell of that place was crazy, not in a bad way, but in a really cool, old, dusty book kinda way.

The main street in Calico

The glass bottle house... looked really cool, but one of the weird, quirky additions.

While we were there we took a tour of Maggie's Mine, which was an actual real working mine back in 1881. Hands down one of the coolest parts of the whole town... being able to go underground and freely explore the mine plus you still saw tons of sparkles in the rock walls.

Ben wandering the hillside above the mine

Ahhh, ice cream... it was hot and Lizzie liked Abby's better!

The girls in the general store, which was also one of the original buildings. Abby was loving all the candy lining one side of the whole store and of course right at her level.