Adventures with Buddy, part 1, Belmont Courthouse

My kids call my step mom Buddy.  See, she's only 12 years older than I am, and if I was too young to be a mom, she was way too young to be a grandmother when Zach came along.  She called Zach "Buddy," and he, in turn, started calling her that.  She's been Buddy ever since.

Sunday after church, Buddy and I set out for an arts & crafts show in Belmont.  Now, the little mining community where Buddy and my dad live is "small town" in feel.  There's a store, a gas station, a bar, a church, even a hotel.  But Belmont is miles away, down an unpaved road, leaving you to feel like you've officially left civilization.

It was worth it.

This beautiful historic building was waiting for us at the end of the ride.

There's a lot of history to the Belmont Courthouse, which was built after a jailbreak from the previous facility.

While I'm pretty sure I don't want to live in Nevada, I did find myself appreciating the beauty of it a lot more on this trip.

The Friends of the Belmont Courthouse were holding an arts & crafts show and sale.  There were all sorts of tempting treasures on display!  Several dog quilts, interesting glass work, wood carvings, jewelry, and more.

I loved the natural frame that the tall windows made!

There's Buddy!  In the window on the left, you can see one of the multicolored glass pieces.

In addition to the items brought in for the event, there were some interesting permanent displays that we got to take a peek at, too.

Yes, the building has holes in it.  Yes, the walls are covered in graffiti.  But it's a building with a ton of character, and I'm so glad I got the chance to see it.

Tools of a bygone era.

String art of Nevada.

This was the jail door.

In some rooms, there's enough wall missing that you can see right into the next room.  This room had these great little wooden bowls in it.  I wanted one, but managed to control myself.

I considered getting one of these glass Nevada shaped pendant necklaces for Brianna, but I decided they were kind of... big.  (Larger than a guitar pick.)

I'm pretty sure this is an antique livestock scale.

And this was a massive safe, flanked by local photography prints.

Can't remember for sure, but I think this was the jail cell that big door came off of.

Maybe it comes from getting into genealogy.  Maybe it's just me getting old, but I find I'm really drawn to old buildings lately.  History.  Days gone by.  A piece of a saner time.

I hope they do a fabulous job of restoring this one.

It would be neat to come back and see it again when it's finished.

We were given permission to go upstairs to poke around, even though the art show was all downstairs.

This room reminded me of the Civil Affairs office in Nanchang, Jiangxi, where I adopted Luke.  It's a similarly shaped, upstairs room with a great view, too.

These glass front bookcases made me think of Paul.  There were several more in other rooms.

I wonder what trials these seats witnessed.  I wonder about all the people who waited anxiously in these chairs to see whether the outcome of a case would be in their favor or not.  If you read some of the links in this list, you'll see that Belmont was very much a Wild West town in it's day.  

If you missed the first two posts about our trip, you can catch up on Vacation Pictures and Gold Mine Tour.  I'll be adding Adventures part 2 and 4th of July later.  

This post may be linked up at these linky parties.

Thanks for clicking for us!