Anniversary Number 7

Our seventh anniversary is actually tomorrow, Monday, September 15, but we celebrated it on Friday and Saturday. First, we ate at a Nepalese/Indian restaurant in Durango, Co. Demaree had lamb kurma, and I had a traditional Nepalese yak stew. FYI, yak is a bit grainy and lacks good intramuscular fat, so it's dry to boot. I wouldn't suggest replacing beef with yak, but it's always good to eat new foods. (Or, in the words of Andrew Zimern, host of Bizarre Foods, "If it looks good, eat it.") Dry yak notwithstanding, the mango lassis were wonderful and the culinary experience was good.

So, after dinner we drove about 15 miles north of Durango and stayed at a bed and breakfast called Country Sunshine. It's a beautiful place run by Jodi and Walter Hammerle. They made us dessert -- creme brulee, and a very good creme brulee at that -- before we sat and talked with some English patrons about English and Saudi politics. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

We started the next morning by eating a blueberry pancake breakfast on the patio, which is in the background of the following pictures.

Having gorged on pancakes, we drove to Silverton, CO. Silverton is an old mining community, that has now become a tourist trap, although it still retains much of its old timey charm.

One of out favorite Silverton features is the Christ of the Mines. It's a marble statute of Christ that was supposed to watch over the town's miners.

Another cool Silverton attraction is the Old Hundred Gold Mine, which we toured.

Our guide, a man with an uncanny ability to mix ten-cent words with atrocious grammar, gave us a primer in excavating a gold mine.

He even introduced us to the long-forgotten, but very useful, miner's honeybucket. Lo and behold, it was on the tracks.

And, finally, the gratuitous photo of us with spade and pickax in hand (as if we'd ever mine. Come on, we went to college for a reason ;)

What a wonderful day. As has been the case for the past seven years, Dem and I loved just being with one another.