Find the Pomodoro Scavenger Hunt

If you've bee here a while, or if you read my previous post, you'll know that I'm a big fan of scavenger hunts, especially ones that involve public art. So today, I'm sharing a local scavenger hunt that can be found right here in Louisville, Colorado.

In the early days of Louisville, the town was populated by Italian miners and their families, which resulted in a strong Italian community. To celebrate the town's Italian heritage and the tomatoes that grow so well here in Summer (practically the only thing that will grow in my veggie patch!), the City of Louisville launched a scavenger hunt called Find the Pomodoro and an accompanying mural on Main Street over Summer.

Now, I know that it's already Fall, but the scavenger hunt is still in progress, and it's a fun way to explore local landmarks and businesses, so let's take a look... 

Louisville Historical Museum

Time for a little local love!

We’ve lived in Louisville, Colorado, for six years now, and I’ve been meaning to check out our local history museum that entire time, but it took my parents visiting from Australia this Summer to get us off our butts and visits what has been right under our noses this whole time!

If you’ve ever been to Louisville’s Main Street, you’re likely familiar with the iconic 5c Coca Cola mural on the side of an early 1900s building. They may not be serving up 5c sodas here, but what they are serving up is a whole lot of Louisville’s history!

This is the Louisville Historical Museum, and today I’m sharing it with you.

Let’s take a look… 

Marshall Fire

Trigger warning: This post contains descriptions and photos of the fire and the damage caused.

I've been pretty quiet here on the blog so far this year. 

In the lead up to the new year I had every intention to start 2022 out strong on the blogging front and play catch up on some posts I've been meaning to share for a very long time. I'm not one to set new year's resolutions or goals, but a new year does always feel like a good time to start afresh, and I'd decided I was going to bite the bullet and just get it done. 

And then 2021 decided to throw us one last blow... 

On December 30th 2021 our little city was hit by one of the worst fires in Colorado's history. Fueled by 110 mile an hour winds, what started out as a small grass fire on nearby farmland quickly spread to the neighboring town of Superior and then here to Louisville. Within hours entire housing subdivisions were gone. Entire neighborhoods wiped out. Tens of thousands of people hit the congested roads to evacuate, grabbing what ever they could in the little time they had to prepare. If you've been following along on Instagram you'll likely know that we were among those who evacuated. We grabbed our pets, important documents, back up drives and favorite toys and joined the traffic heading north and east, not knowing if we'd have a home to return to.

We're among the lucky ones. The wind changed direction before the fire reached our neighborhood. Our home is still standing. A little smoky at first, but completely undamaged. Unfortunately, around one thousand families in our community can not say the same. Their homes are gone. So too are their most cherished belongings, and unfortunately in many cases, their beloved pets. The fire moved so quickly that there was little time to grab anything before evacuating. Many families were away on vacation at the time with no one able to access their homes and save their pets. It's heartbreaking. As well as those who lost everything, there are many more families in our community whose homes have been rendered uninhabitable due to to smoke and ash damage (whether visible or not). 

I'm sure you've seen it all on the news, but today I'm going to share my story from experiencing the fire first hand. Our home was spared and for the most part we had the comfort of watching the fire from afar (through our Nest camera and Twitter) but I did find myself in the thick of it at one point and it was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. It is the only time I have honestly feared for my life.

Pumpkin Patch 2020

Halloween is less than a week away! Can you believe it? Wasn't it March just yesterday?

Like most people, our pumpkin patch visit looked a little different this year due to Covid. Originally I wasn't even sure if we would make it to a pumpkin patch, but we did and while there wasn't all the fanfare of previous year's visits, I'm so glad we were able to have a little normalcy - even if it wasn't exactly "normal". 

With the fires here in Colorado and the terrible air quality from the smoke, I'd put off visiting a pumpkin patch. I'd also been trying to avoid visiting on a weekend to reduce the number of people we came into contact with, but with snow forecast for today I knew we had to visit a pumpkin patch before the cold froze the pumpkins. 

So Saturday we put on our masks and headed to 7th Generation Farm right here in Louisville. It seems that half of Louisville had the same idea as the place was pretty busy, but with everyone in masks and being outside I felt like we were safe. There was no corn maze, no haunted house, no zombie paintball, no corn pits, no pumpkin blasters, no face painting, no bounce house, no cheesy photo props, but there were pumpkins, and that's what we were there for after all.