Tuesday, September 27, 2011

o miles driven, 2.3 plus walked

Today was a really relaxing day!  Mixed it up a bit and went to get my coffee first — at 6:30; quite chilly and pretty dark and very very quiet.  Spent more time at breakfast than usual reading all the papers available: WSJ, NYT, Aspen Times, Aspen Daily News.  We went back to the room and checked email then moved to the pool; nice table in the sun — air cool but the sun quite warm.  Read and monitored email for an hour or so and then we played dominoes.  Bob kills me in thin air; here and at Mammoth he seems to win.  He only owes me $700 now…

Just before noon we headed to lunch and then decided to walk to the Holden/Marolt Mining and Ranching Museum.  Chose to try Junk which we have walked by countless times, always will a lot of people seated outside and in, lunch and dinner.  It is at the corner of the two ped-only streets, right near the funny water fountain that comes out of the street grate.  The fountain has no apparent rhyme nor reason to its sputtering so quite entertaining to watch dogs and little kids get sprayed as they try to figure it out.

Bob had a Chicago hot dog, fries and an Arnold Palmer; fish taco and an IPA draught for me.  There was some sort of kerfluffle in the kitchen so service was very slow.  And they didn’t seem to really care.  Food was good but probably a one-off.

We took off walking to the museum on city streets and bike/hiking paths.  It was about a mile with lots of signage about the old MIdland railroad, the mining industry, etc.   The museum itself is fantastic.  It is housed in one of the original buildings of the mining (then ranching) site.  the volunteer/docent, Jane, was really good.  She gave us a 20-minute overview of the museum and some history before we explored it on our own.  There is an incredible amount of period photographs, artifacts, old equipment.   Aspen’s mining district was the largest silver producer in the US when this site was constructed in 1891.

Jane also gave us information for our day on Wednesday:  directions to old mining sites and ghost towns.   We plan to drive/hike to them tomorrow with a picnic.

Walked back to the hotel and meandered through town.  Then we hit the pool area again with our books and a (plastic) glass of Chardonnay.  Took showers and walked to dinner — Rustique Bistro.

We sat at the bar with a nice bartender.  The wine list had great bottles but the prices are so ridiculous.  They charge for glasses what we pay for the bottle…. the bartender was sympathetic.  We ended up ordering a Penfold’s Shiraz for $36 — about the cheapest thing on the menu.  But it was very good.  Bob started with the onion soup (very good, he loved it) and I the asparagus salad with a perfect mustardy vinaigrette.  Then Bob had the steak frites and grilled trout on grilled mushrooms and fingerling potatoes for me.  Yum!  Bob’s steak was beautifully pink and peppery.  We both loved it.  Might go back tomorrow, although we passed a couple of more places that look promising.  There are something like 45 restaurants within a 5 minute walk from our hotel so you can see the difficulty….

We walked in on the maid doing the turn-down service and I scared the poor woman to death when I screamed.  That bear still has my nerves on edge!!

We are in bed pretty early — LOL on our least “energetic’ day yet!!  It seems the more relaxed and sleep we get, the more sleep we need.