For many, many years we’ve heard about Leadville’s burro races (part of their annual Boom Days celebration), but the timing has never worked out for us to attend. Fortunately this year our trip overlapped with a similar quadruped-fest in nearby South Park. Not only does it feature burros, it has a whole day called Llamarama!
We joke that Seamy identifies as a llama, and he was more than a little intrigued by these big, curly guys.
It turns out that llamas & alpacas are both members of the camelid family, so it was cool to bookend our trip with camels. Check out Shepherd Finn escorting a llama through the grueling obstacle course. 🙃
As you can see in our gallery, we all had fun meeting the creatures, as well as exploring the town—especially its Wild West-era buildings and trains. Here’s hoping we can meet these guys again someday!
Literally every time we’ve visited Leadville, we’ve driven past a gorgeous mountain lake surrounded by mountains, and probably half of those times we’ve asked ourselves, “Hey, why don’t we ever stop off here for a hike?”
A few days after the boys returned to us in Leadville, we turned right back to head down the mountain to spend an eventful weekend with pals in & around Denver.
Following a great Friday evening dinner with Margot’s old friend Troy and his wife (with whom Henry bonded over vintage model trains—because, of course he would!), we got up on Saturday and headed over to the Forney Transportation Museum. As you can see, Hen was craaaazy excited to see the Big Boy engine & vintage vehicles 🤪:
Here’s a gallery we captured during our visit. Notably, Hen did most of the shooting himself (!), rocking my big camera and later helping me pick pics.
Afterwards we met up with the Lingles to celebrate Auntie Laura’s birthday over some Native American cuisine, then dropped by my buddy Justin’s beautiful new home & met his lovely girlfriend Maria. We all had a blast—especially Seamus, somewhat literally 😉:
On Sunday we made plans to meet up with our old friends Ethan & Diane and their son Charlie in Golden, a cute town that sits between Denver & Leadville. Back in 2016 we’d visited the Colorado Train Museum in Golden (see gallery from that day), which the boys naturally loved.
Dropping by again this year let us re-enact some of of our previous antics in front of the giant snowplow train. Compare 2016…
…to 2021:
It was especially fun that Finn chose to join Henry & me at the museum while Margot and Seamus explored Golden. Many episodes of brotherly fake-beatdowns followed, as did the boys pushing the enormous turntable around by hand! Check out our gallery from the day, plus a quick vid of our ride around the grounds:
And last but not least, here’s a small gallery showing our shots from dinner, lunch, Justin’s house, and our time in Golden.
