Eureka!

I have lived in Nevada now for almost 26yrs and for the most part have stayed in the most northern half of the state;  I 've been to Vegas once and Tonopah a few times.  

This January, Bryan and I celebrated our 16yr anniversary!!  First, I would like to say that I can honestly say it keeps getting better and better with each passing year. I know that I am truly blessed to have Bryan as my husband.  So, for our anniversary's in the past, we like to try to get out of town. We wanted to plan a 4 to 5 day trip but due to Bryan's promotion with the state, his work schedule wasn't going to allow it anywhere near out actually anniversary, so we decided to at least do a day trip somewhere and then we are going to plan a bigger trip later on.

   The weather was forcasted to be sunny and quite warm actually-around 50-so we hopped in the car and headed down to Eureka, NV.  Why?  I've never been there and have been told that its a neat little town with lots of history that you can still 'look' at today.  There's also a really good place to get lunch there.

   The drive started out on I-80 to Carlin and then headed south down through Pine Valley into Diamond Valley and eventually Eureka.  The drive took us a little over 2hrs and was absolutely beautiful all of the way!

   It was very relaxing and refreshing to have a day that had no time limits on it and even better that we got to spend it together.  For Bryan, he has made this trip quite a few times before for work purposes but he feels that when you can actually pay attention to the scenery a bit more instead of traffic and you have your best friend with ya, the drive doesn't get old.

 Yes, there really is a 'soft' and 'tender' side to this 'so intimidating' man!

   As you can see in the pics, like most of the state, there's not much snow and its January-it is really dry!!

 When we got to Eureka, we went and ate at the Pony Express Deli-I highly recommend it!!  After lunch, we did the 'history walk' around the town.  We started off at the museum and went from there.

    A great use for used horseshoes!!  

 Down the sidewalk on the main street through town.

 We noticed that there a lot of churches in this small town!!  I don't think that all of them are currently being used but many different denominations are represented or have been in the past.

  There are still a lot of older homes scattered around the town too.

 When we got done, I think we had walked around and looked at around 40 different buildings that were historical landmarks.  Its kind of funny how many times the post office and had changed buildings  over the years.  Anyhow, we are planning on going back with the girls for some history lessons-can't beat hands-on learning!
   As you can probably guess, like most town in Nevada, Eureka was started with mining so there are a lot of the 'remains' of the original mining that took place there many years ago-mainly, really big piles of slag.  I was surprised that the town has built itself around these piles instead of moving them out, however, I'm sure that moving those wouldn't be a 'little' task for many reasons-i.e.  where would it go, you would probably need dynamite to break it up-its melted rock after all and dynamite going off in town might cause more problems then it solves and the large equipment to get it out would probably tear up the roads just to name a few.
 

 It ended up being just a perfect day spent with a perfect man!!  I know that a lot of people rolled their eyes and thought it 'strange' that we were looking forward to spending the day in Eureka but for me, they were over-looking the 'day together' part. For me this is huge and ended up being the perfect gift!