Before I dive into this post I’d like to ask you to revisit my previous post if you’d like to: Liebster Award Nomination. I decided not to make it a two part post (because originally I was falling asleep towards the end of writing it) and to just go back and edit the post and finish it up. You will see towards the bottom of the post a header: “Update 05/12/2020”; and under that header you will find “Eleven (11) Facts About Myself”, my nominations of 7 blogs and the corresponding questions I’ve posed for the nominees to answer. I did go ahead and notify the 7 nominees in the comment section of their blogs.  So if you’d like to read the rest of my ramblings related to Anna at Homeschool Guru  nominating me for a blogging award head on over there (smile).

And now onto the previous Friday’s frolicking adventure…

Indie Bookstore and Antique Shop Browsing!

I am off work on Fridays (I work Monday – Thursday) and my partner John and I decided to have a little adventure. We heard last week that the town of Castle Rock, Colorado was relaxing their business closure rules during the pandemic and would allow some businesses to open.

Masked and gloved we headed out to Castle Rock as we checked and their independent bookstore Sudden Fiction Books was open! It feels like its been eons since I’ve been able to wander through a bookstore or a public library so I was so excited to browse.

I love independent (indie) bookstores and I’ve blogged about them in the past – Independent Bookstores (wonderful & magical places). I try to support them whenever I can.

We had an exquisite browse at Sudden Fiction in downtown Castle Rock, which sells both new and used books and we left with quite the stack of new and used books (mainly science fiction). Here are photos from that visit.

Here is my partner John all masked and gloved while browsing.

I had a lovely chat with the shopkeeper while maintaining social distancing and trying to talk through our masks. We occasionally we did have to repeat ourselves as some words do not enunciate very clearly through a mask!

On our way out of the bookstore we noticed there we other shops open in downtown Castle Rock to include an antique shop!

The only shopping I’ve done in the past couple of  months was at grocery stores or “box stores” (Costco, Target, Home Depot) and what a pleasure it was to actually wander/browse through an independent retail shop.

Here are photos from our inside and outside wander (they have an outdoor garden kitsch section) at The Barn in downtown Castle Rock. We bought some new yard art there to support the business.

In the garden section out back I was particularly fascinated by their huge collection of large rusted letters. We photographed them in both color and black & white.

But alas, I could not figure out why I needed them so we did not leave the shop with any large letters!

We also ate lunch in Castle Rock at a new place called Cuba Cuba. We were allowed to walk in and order at the bar (maintaining social distance of course) and then we had to wait outside on the patio for our food. Inside the restaurant was lovely and we look forward to the day we can go inside and dine (or even sit outside on their nice patio and dine). But we happily ate our Cuban sandwiches in the car.

All the things I used to kind of take for granted pre-pandemic. What a treat it was to be able to browse in downtown Castle Rock on Friday!

Postscript

Speaking of Castle Rock, we were excited that Castle Rock had loosened some restrictions but unfortunately not all Castle Rock business behaved as the Colorado governor had mandated when the restrictions were loosened as you will see in this online news article:

Governor Suspends Castle Rock Restaurant’s License After Mother’s Day Opening Goes Viral