Well we had a super time up at Calico. Saturday was a lovely warm day, and 2 battles of the Civil War era took place, the union won in the morning, and the south won the afternoon battle. Calico is up in the hills as it was a silver and borax mining town, closed in the late 1800s. Then in about the 1950s it was bought by the owner of Knotts berry farms, and rebuilt. Today it is a county park, with a campsite just below it.
The campsite is very busy with ATV folks rushing around in various gas guzzling machines. Up the hill in the ghost town- this weekend it was full of people in period costumes, the 2 sides of the Civil War, lots of soldiers, officers, a military band, and Abraham Lincoln who gave the Gettysburg Address, and looked very convincing. There were also sheriffs, shopkeeper women, a saddle maker, and 2 mountain men, very impressive in long leather coats and pants, with fur hats, and their nice chatty and informative female companion.
There were 2 tent villages of troops who stayed for the whole long weekend. They fire rifles and handguns, pistols, and there were cannon for both sides. They held parades, a small theatre group put on some amusing skits, we did some leather tooling, some folks panned for gold, others enjoyed the beer garden with a nice folk singer there. There are places to get snacks and meals in the village, plus a sweet shop and a couple of places to buy coffee and ice cream.
Today Sunday was a totally different day as it was very chilly and windy too, we nearly left before the first battle of the Civil War, but in the end we lasted til it finished just after noon. The wind was whistling around and folks were huddled up quite a bit against the cold weather that had descended on the village. Our car temp read 9 degrees just after noon, brrrrrr. So we left.
There are quite a few gift and souvenir shops, a quilt shop, a music and gift shop, and a candle making shop. There was quite a lot to do, but today all we wanted was a hot chocolate as we really weren't dressed for the cold, a leather jacket would have been perfect today.
It didn't take us that long to get home, we were back here by 3 PM or so. There is quite a bit of snow on the local mountains, but not that low down, here in the valley it isn't very cold at the moment, thankfully.
The event is well worth a day visit if you are down here on President's Day weekend, entrance is $10 per adult per day, and Saturday the town was full of folks enjoying the activities. There are military parades, inspection of the troops, color guards, all the buildings are open with printing presses going, the blacksmith making iron tools, a rope maker making rope, candle making. There was Civil War era dancing yesterday, it was really neat, round dances with intricate patterns of dance, good for meeting new folks, all in all a nice family day.
I believe the town is open year round, it is only a few miles outside of Barstow, on the road to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is only another 150 miles from there or so.
We really enjoyed our weekend, it was well worth the drive for us, but today we should have had some warmer clothing in the wind and at that altitude. We thought the altitude was likely about 3500 feet or so, and on the way we had passed through a lot of Joshua tree cactuses along our route, in the Mojave desert.
Tomorrow Monday is President's Day here, a long weekend for many folks.
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