Nederland (elevation 8236 feet) has a free mining museum. Lots of giant old equipment lay scattered about. It made a wonderful playground for photographs.

Regan is dwarfed by the giant steam shovel.

Junk...

... or art?

The museum was also packed full of old stuff inside as well. According to the woman behind the desk, everything was donated. They had even had much much more but gave a bunch of it away to local people who wanted it... for their lawns, for in front of their business, etc.

Lots of stuff!

An old hand-pumped cart, still on its tracks

While the image of the crusty old miner in a steam with his large shallow pan is very popular, there was very little placer mining in Boulder County. Instead, more hard rock mining was done to remove valuable ore from the hillside.

A double jack team competes for prizes in a mining contest.

Mining hats with lamps

Check your temperature

Some gold ore. Gold, silver and tungsten were mined in this area. Gold first attracted miners to the area but it is found in only small amounts in the ore. Silver was also popular until the market crashed in 1893.

Tungsten (also known as wolfram) is a hard, rare metal and has the highest melting point of all metallic elements. In the early 1900's, Nederland was known as the "Tungsten capital of the world."

Mr. Boston's pinch bottle. Old Mr. Boston was a distillery in Boston, Massachusetts from 1933 to 1986. It produced gin, bourbon, rum and brandies. "The Pinch" (or The Dimple) is a popular Blended Deluxe Scotch.

We walked over to the tourist office to see what else there was to do. It was the wrong time of year for Frozen Dead Guy days, but we did learn of the Carousel of Happiness.

The Story of the Frozen Dead Guy

Bredo Morstoel was born in Norway in 1900. He died of heart failure during a nap in 1989. His grandson had him frozen through a process called Cyronics, the preservation of legally dead humans at a very low temperature (below -200 F or -130C) with the hope that future science can restore them to life, youth and health. So far, we don't possess that technology. Once packed in dry ice, grandpa was shipped to California where he was put on liquid nitrogen. He now rests in a shed nearby here.

Did he want this? No one seems to really know. But his grandson was deported back to Norway due to an expired visa, and his mother (Bredo's daughter) was evicted from their home in Nederland when it was discovered they had no plumbing or electricity. Her visa also then expired and she left for Norway as well... leaving grandpa behind.

He is now being taken care of by Bo Shaffer who, every few weeks, drives to Denver and hauls nearly a ton of dry ice up to the shed. Fortunately, large sums of money were left behind by the family to take care of this. When city officials learned of this in 1994, they passed a law making it illegal to keep dead human or animal remains on one's property. But since a law can't be applied to things after the fact, grandpa was "grandfathered" in. Now every winter, there is a large party to celebrate the Frozen Dead Guy.

Hunger called so we first made our way to the Wild Mountain Smokehouse & Brewery. They were quite busy and the service was EXCEEDINGLY slow, but fortunately we weren't in a hurry. It did mean that by the time we got our beer, it was flat from having sat for so long.

Hmmm... creepy logo

Yup, this is what I got... the only vegetarian thing on the menu. To be fair, it was a smokehouse.

The sampler was called a BeerSki!

This is what the beer looked like when we got it. None of them were particularly enjoyable.

One could also get a sampler of hot sauces! The Carolina mustard (front left) was wonderful!

We then headed to the carousel, crossing the pedestrian bridge.

A pedestrian in Nederland, of course!

The Carousel of Happiness is a 1910 Looff carousel with 58 animals carved by its creator, Scott Harrison. We apparently arrived in between crowds, so it was just us and another little kid. It was hard to choose since all the creatures were so wonderful! Eventually I selected the mermaid and Regan had to be content with the dolphin next to her. We slowly started turning, chasing an elephant and a camel, being pursued by a dragon and a fish, and going up and down to songs such as Chatanooga Choo Choo and Jeepers Creepers on a restored 1914 Wurlitzer Band Organ.

We definitely don't want to do that!

The organ is to the right.

Some of the other wonderful creations

Overhead were also critters...

... as well as paintings.

After our ride, we went upstairs where we could look down on the merry-go-round.