Ghost Towns and Gun Fights

We decided to take advantage of the nearest Ghost town and have a western family adventure. When I told the kids we were going to a ghost town I think the little kids envisioned something akin to a whole town of haunted houses. I think Ben was especially disappointed to find a small town with some old run-down homes and shops.
Luckily this particular town has a unique appeal as all of the wild donkeys that used to work in the mine were set free when the mine closed, but their descendants wander in and out of town every day for the "goodies" they are fed by tourists.

Of course there are hazards to such "free-spirited" visitors roaming the town at will. They block traffic (not that there is a ton of traffic in this little town), and some of the burros have become a bit over zealous in their desire to be fed and follow people around and can get a bit aggressive. We saw one pull a bag out of a tourists pocket and chew on it. Another challenge is that some of the burros are getting quite obese. No one is regulating their feeding and carrots are like candy to the donkeys. There was one that was either super pregnant or it had majorly overdosed on carrots. There is a little oversight as someone puts "no carrot" stickers on the baby donkeys whose teeth aren't ready for carrots yet.

The kids were a little nervous at first to have all these donkeys approaching them with their mouths open, but once they got the hang of it they had a great time.

Another fun aspect of the town is that some of the locals dress up and put on a little gun show. A little cheesy, but the kids got a kick out of the loud bangs.



We decided that this would be a good opportunity to have some of those "old time" photos of our family. In the past when we've considered doing something like that we were at an amusement park, and the thought of spending an hour dressing up and doing pictures after paying so much to get in didn't really seem wise. Now however we had nothing pressing to do, so why not.


My favorite is the boys- that will be a classic! You can tell Ben is in his element.


After a picnic lunch we headed home. Although I did stop to take a few photos of the decorated sage brush on the road. Why? I just thought it was an unusual thing to do, but it did make the drive through the desert a bit more interesting. I believe that the sage brush decorating was specific to a site where someone had died in a car accident, but maybe some of it was simply random.