A walk in the park...

In Lake City, there is a famous ice cream parlor called the San Juan Soda Fountain. It has an old fashioned, heavy oak counter with all the familiar looking equipment and menu of a 50’s soda fountain. There are about 20-30 flavors of ice cream and for some reason it’s the best tasting ice cream you’ve ever had! Maybe it is the atmosphere in the shop, or the quaint mountain town outside. Maybe it’s that we always take it over to the town park across the street and eat it while sitting barefoot in the soft grass, looking up at the high mountains that surround the town. Or it could just be that they have the best ice cream ever. If you stop in, you have to try the mocha almond flavor….there is something really satisfying about toasted almonds in ice cream stuck in a freshly made waffle cone.

The girl who waited on us in the tiny grocery store told us Lake City has only about 450 people who live here year round. This was emphasized by a framed photo in the Mocha Moose coffee shop. It said, “Lake City before tourist season.” And the photo was of a handful of shop keepers along with 8-10 dogs sitting on the front steps of the coffee shop lazily waiting.

Along the town square there are gift shops, an organic grocery store, a steak restaurant whose owner is from Italy and think Maggie, my 7 year old, looks like a princess and was talking to him with her eyes. She was on cloud 9 after hearing that and kept staring at other people trying to “talk to them with her eyes.” =)

Down the street from the soda fountain is an espresso shop. The next time we were in town we stopped there. Hannah had Chai tea, Emma had French vanilla Italian soda and a blended iced mocha frappe for me. Very cute shop called the Mocha Moose.

Meanwhile back at the campground, there were fresh brookie trout for dinner. They were very good. Only Emma didn’t try them (city girl).

We have now banned the headphones and Gameboy, by the way. The girls are getting more into playing cards, Chinese checkers, badminton (binka bonka), and reading their books they brought. They are also much more pleasant….we’ve found that the more they get into their own heads with the music, games, or at home computer games and television, the more irritable and zombie-like they become. So back to rules….no Gameboy or music hooked into your ears while camping…unless there’s a long car trip to be endured.