Monday Visual Inspiration: These boots are made for walkin', and washin', and everything else

Back in September 2010, Guy and I spent a weekend in Manitou Springs, CO. While there, we visited a few impressively-curated historical places loaded with frontier ephemera. I've been lax in posting on that trip (or on anything around here for that matter), and I found myself excited and intrigued yet again upon rediscovering the digital photos from that trip.

When I was a wee Pixie in Alabama back in the day, my parents bought us all 15 volumes of the Childcraft Library. One of the volumes was on places all over the world, and my favorite chapter in that book was on "Scary Places". It described haunted castles, the misty Scottish moors, the creepyness of the unstable ground in the Everglades...and this incredible phenomenon known as "ghost towns". It took a while for my brain to wrap around the notion these places were not complete towns settled by ghosts, but rather by actual humans pursuing gold or silver and then suddenly abandoning those towns only ten or fewer years later after building them. I remember thinking, even as a four-year-old, "Man, I want to go see on of those."

Now I live in a state full of ghost towns. If you have a decent four-wheel-drive vehicle, you can see many of the settlements that were part of that early drive to settle the Western Frontier. It furthermore blows my mind when I stop and realize that I actually live in the place once known as The West. It blows my mind even more to know that women--with their East Coast and European traditions--had to live out here and make do in this weather. I can barely stand to wear an Ann Taylor pantsuit during a Denver summer, never mind a hoop skirt and full sleeves. So I present to you a few images we took of women's clothing and accessories during our Manitou Springs trip to the Ghost Town Museum and Miramont Castle.