Our Day in Golden

This Labor Day we decided we'd better stay close-ish to home (only one day off plus Mark had a test on Tuesday) so I looked up a couple of possibilities and we decided we would spend our day in Golden.  We woke up early on Monday morning and drove about an hour to Golden Gate State Park.  It's a beautiful area just about a half hour drive from Golden.  

They have twelve trails that all look pretty awesome but we decided this go around we would do the "Buffalo Trail."  It was a beautiful day to go hiking but we were a little sad to not see any exciting wildlife (the day before on the trail we went on people had seen a mountain lion and a moose).  But we still had fun!

At the end of our hike were these old historical buildings - some were holding up a little better than others :)

This was called the Tallman Ranch and it was nestled here by this little lake by a Swedish family in the 1870's.  Their family stayed here until the 1950's - pretty crazy.  A beautiful place to be though. 

After our hike we went and ate lunch at Panorama Point.  It was beautiful - perfect day.  

After we were done eating we changed our clothes and drove back down to Golden.  It's a nice little town on the west side of Denver.  We decided we would go to the Colorado Railroad Museum that is there.  I have quickly learned that the railroad is a BIG deal here is Colorado and they have a really neat museum here.  They have made all of these replicas of different trains and the whole countryside with them plus have some other interesting stuff inside.  

This replica was ENORMOUS!  So cool how detailed it was!

Outside of the museum they have a bunch of trains that you can look at and inside.  It was neat to see how this form of transportation looked like inside and try and imagine traveling like that.  

These HUGE trains cleared away the snow on the tracks - they were absolutely MASSIVE!

 

Overall it was a really great day.  We are excited to be here and see these new sights here in the Denver area.