All Hail To The Class Of 1952

During the last week of August I participated in another Passport In Time project. The purpose of this project was to find evidence/artifacts related to the 1849 migration of pioneers from Arkansas to California on the trail that came to be known as the Cherokee Trail. The area we were searching, with metal detectors, was a very remote area in Wyoming along the border with Colorado. The closest town to our search area was Laramie and it was about 35 miles to the east.

On the third day or our search I found the high school class ring pictured above. It was about three inches down in the dirt in a wooded area. In the picture you can plainly see the “G” on the top of the ring, presumably indicating the school’s name started with “G”. On the panels next to the “G” is engraved the class year of 1952 and then on the panels to the outside of the class year are the initials C P which is presumably the initials of the owner. In the same general area we found horse shoes, mule shoes and wagon parts but nothing else modern except a few empty rifle cartridges. How the heck did this ring get there and who is/was the owner?

Artifacts found on these projects are normally recorded and then left in place unless they are historically important. This ring certainly is not historically important but I was intrigued. I’ve heard a lot of stories of metal detectors finding and returning personal property to owners who thought their prized possession was long gone and I wanted to give it a shot. The Forest Service Archaeologist agreed to let me keep the ring for a while and try to find the owner….who, if she were still alive would be about 76 years old.

To make a long story short, I have contacted every public high school in Wyoming and Colorado that starts with the letter G. Amazingly, all were able to check their records and tell me that there was no girl student in the class of 1952 with the initials C P. I also checked but found no private high schools in Wyoming or Colorado that started with the letter G and was active in 1952. Finally I contacted the manufacturer of the ring, Josten and was told that their records do not go back 58 years so that was a dead end as well.

I don’t think I’m prepared to check out every public/private high school in the remaining 48 states so unless I can think of another option I will return the ring to the Forest Service Archaeologist. She will either archive it or perhaps take it back to where I found it and rebury it for posterity.

I thought it was a noble idea and I realized when I started that it was an extreme long shot for me to successfully find the owner but it was a fun project. I was amazed at helpfulness of each high school I contacted after I told them the story of how I found the ring…..so C P who ever you are, your ring has caused many people to think about who you are and where you are and what your life was like. Where ever you are, I wish you the best!

Thanks for visiting.

Alive and Well

It has been a very long time since my last post. I guess I should have posted an explanation but to tell the truth I’ve been very busy and at the same time a bit burned out on writing for the blog. I’m happy and healthy and have been “adventuring” quite a bit. The adventures have included several more Passport In Time projects, a vacation with The Bride in the Black Hills and several metal detecting expeditions. I can’t explain why but the blog seemed to become more like work than fun and I’ve decided to take a hiatus for a while. Hopefully the “urge” will return as I’ve really got some good stories to tell….In the meantime here’s some random pictures from the past couple of months.

 

Thanks for visiting

Pawnee Campground –Brainard Lake

Another weekend of camping! This brings me to a total of 50 nights spent in my trailer this year so far…and I have at least four more weeks of activities planned between now and October.

The Bride and I left home of Friday morning at about 9 am and headed for Pawnee Campground to meet the rest of The Circle….Too Tall-Two Timing, K., Guitar and Pic-E. This campground is about an hour and a half drive from home and is at about 10,300 feet in elevation. With all the adventures I’ve had so far this year, this is the first time this season that I’ve camped this high and we picked the perfect time to do it! While The Circle camped in 70 degree weather, the Denver area sweltered in 100 degree temps!

It was an adventure to start with. The campsite I chose was listed as a 40 foot back-in site. Plenty of room for both my trailer and truck….if you could get into it! What the description didn’t say was that the access road was a very narrow rough dirt road with ditches on both sides and the area was heavily forested. To make a long story short, it took me about an hour to get the trailer into the site and once I was in, I was wedged between two trees both less than two feet from either side of the trailer.

In the picture above you can see the tree close to the door side of the trailer. I had to climb on the trailer roof and cut some of the branches off of the tree to keep it from damaging the roof.

After that adventure I was ready to chill for the rest of the weekend and we did just that. We had two days of pleasant weather, good food and good friends. The campground itself was peaceful but the surrounding area was crawling with folks from the front range getting away from the heat. It was so crowded that the park rangers were limiting the number of people coming in and when we left on Sunday morning we saw them allowing one vehicle in for every vehicle coming out.

It was stunning scenery but there were probably as many people on the trails as at the mall here in town. A little too “peoplefied” for my tastes.

I now have a break of about two weeks with no out of town adventures and then I’m off to Twin Lakes, CO for a Passport In Time project. This project will be an archaeological survey looking for prehistoric Indian sites east of the Arkansas River. There have been numerous reports of tepee rings, lithic scatters and other evidence of prehistoric occupation but the Forest Service has never done an official survey of the area. It will be fun and an adventure!

The week after that I’m off to Wyoming for another PIT, this time using a metal detector to find evidence of the Cherokee Trail. And the week after that I’m back close to home at Guanella Pass doing another archaeological survey with the Forest Service.

I have applied for three more Passport In Time projects in September and October that I have not heard anything about yet….and The Bride and I will spend a week camping in the Black Hills of South Dakota in September so the adventures definitely will continue.

Thanks for visiting.

The Adventures Continue

It’s been a while since my last post but that doesn’t mean that “his-self” has been bored or lonely. One of the reasons for the lack of posting is that I’ve just been having too much fun to sit down at the computer. This post is being typed in my trailer which is parked in Lathrop State Park in Walsenburg, CO….but more about that later.

Last weekend we three couples of The Circle had a 4th of July camping outing at Mueller State Park just to the west of Colorado Springs and on the north side of Pikes Peak. The Circle socializes a lot while we are in the Denver area but because of our diverse schedules, we don’t get to camp out together all that much so this weekend was a treat. It was a great weekend with liberal amounts of sightseeing, relaxing, group dining, laughter and fun. To add to the fun, Jamie and Betsy (part of Guitar’s extended family) joined us.

On Saturday we took a tour of the mining gold camps in the area. The picture at the top of this post was taken in the historic mining town of Victor, CO…birthplace of Lowell Thomas. For all you whippersnappers out there, Lowell Thomas was a very famous news reporter in the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Victor is also the home of some of the most famous gold mines in the United States. The Independence, the Cresson, the Gold Coin and pictured just to the left of the American flag above, the Portland. At it’s peak in about 1902 Victor had a population of about 17,500. Today the population is about 400 and it looks more like a ghost town than lively bustling mining town.

There is one active mine left in town and it is just over the hill from the Portland Mine in the picture above. The Portland represents the old hard rock mining of the past. The new mining is open pit mining and while I understand the necessity of this approach to mining it sure is a shame to see what happens to a mountain when gold is mined in this way.

To give you an idea of the scale of this type of mining look at the picture on the right. The dot that the black arrow is pointing to is a pickup truck!

The weather for our outing was just perfect with the exception of one night when all hell broke loose. We had just finished dinner outside at the picnic table when and evening shower commenced. The shower rapidly got ugly and it rained, hailed, thundered and lightninged, blew and every other thing for about two hours. At one point we had about an inch of hail on the ground and my trailer awning nearly collapsed. Since the entire group was eating outside my trailer we all rode out the storm in my trailer….all eight adults and five dogs! It was a might cramped but we all had fun as you can see by the picture to the left.

On Monday morning we had our traditional group breakfast…with Mimosas, before breaking up and returning home.

Now about my current location. I left the Denver area this morning (Friday, 7/9) and headed south to the little town of  Walsenburg. Tomorrow morning I’ll be meeting up with a number of people who are all members of the Pike’s Peak Adventure League (I’m a member too.) This is a metal detecting club based in Colorado Springs. About once a month during the good weather months they have an outing. Tomorrow we will be going to metal detect at an old coal camp site that is located on private land. This area of Colorado had numerous coal camps to supply fuel for the railroads and other industry from the 1890’s until the 1930’s and later. This will be my first outing with the group so I’m not sure what to expect, but it should be interesting. The person who set up the outing informed us that we would be in rattlesnake country so I have come with snake gaiters for my legs and I’ll be carrying a  .38 caliber pistol loaded with snake shot! Hopefully my next report will tell you about all the cool artifacts we dug up…and the lack of snake activity so stay tuned.

I’ve also been selected for two more Forest Service Passport In Time adventures which I’ll tell you more about after I get home next week.

Thanks for visiting.

Two Week Road Trip

I will be headed out first thing Sunday morning for two weeks of travel and adventure. I’m headed first to the Hudson-Meng Archaeological Site in the Nebraska National Forest. This site is about 20 miles north of Crawford, Nebraska. My plan is to drive from the Denver area up through Cheyenne, Torrington and Van Tassel, WY and then head east on US 20 to Fort Robinson State Park where I’ll spend the night. Monday morning I’ll tour the historical park and then head for the Passport In Time project. The site is relatively remote so I don’t think I’ll be able to post any updates until at least Sunday 6/20 when I’ll head out. Right now the weather forecast is pretty good for that area with temps in the high 70’s at a max. That is great because this project involves excavation and that’s just like you see on TV, a lot of kneeling and brushing away minute amounts of dirt to reveal bison bones or stone age tools.

On Sunday I’ll drive from the project north along US 385 to Hill City, SD and spend the night at a commercial RV park so I can dump my waste tanks and take on fresh water before going to the next PIT project which will be about 15 miles from my overnight stay in Hill City in the lovely Black Hills National Forest. This project is also pretty remote and there will be no internet connection and most likely not even any cell phone reception.

When I complete this project on Friday afternoon, I’ll get to meet up with Too Tall – Two Timing and his bride K who will be staying at an RV Resort just south of Hill City. They will be in the area for about a week taking in all the sights and there are a ton of things to do and see in the area. Check it out here. We should have a great mini Circle The Wagons night and once again I’ll get the opportunity to dump my waste tanks and take a nice long shower!

I brought the trailer home yesterday and began cleaning and loading it for the trip. While shuttling between the house and the trailer I heard the low powerful roar of a piston airplane engine. Looking up I saw a vintage B17G Flying Fortress fly right over the house. This plane visits the Denver area at least once a year and is available for ground tours and if you want to fork over about $400 you can take a 15-20 flight in it. I kept an eye out all the rest of the day hoping I would see it again and get a picture of it but only spotted it one more time at a distance. I’ll bet today, being a Friday, I’ll see it more.

This will most likely be my last post for about a week, but stay tuned….adventure ahead!

Thanks for visiting.

A Visit From Cajon

My son in law Cajon arrived in the Denver area last night. He will be staying with us for a couple of days while he looks for an apartment in the Denver area. Oh, my you say? What’s up with that?

Very good news.

Cajon is originally from Colorado and has always wanted to return here. The fact that he and my daughter, Cajenn, have lived in California for the past few years has made Colorado an even sweeter prospect and he has convinced his employer that he can do his job just as well from here as he can in California. To make things even sweeter, my daughter’s employer also has an office in the Denver area and she has been able to transfer her job location here as well. Their plan is to move to an apartment sometime in August and begin a search for a house…at their leisure.

The Bride and I are both excited. My work a day career took me to seven different locations and the closest we ever were to family was about a three hour drive for a few years. For most of my 35 year career we were five hours or much more from family. To have family in the same town, at this stage in our lives will be a real treat.

The Bride had previously scheduled a girls night with Pic-E and K. so tonight after Cajon finishes his search for the day I’m going to take him to Bud’s Bar for a good ‘ole greasy cheeseburger. He has heard me talk about Bud’s for some time now but has never had the opportunity to visit. I’ll fix that tonight. Guitar and Too Tall-Two Timing will meet us there and we’ll have a high old time, I’m sure.

Hmmm, the Ca part of Cajon and Cajenn refer to their residence in California. I guess I’ll have to give them new monikers. Not sure Cojon and Cojenn will work? Any suggestions?

Thanks for visiting.

Plover Patrol – Last Part (5/23/2010)

Yesterday (Saturday) was terrifically windy. I’m talking constant wind of 35-40 mph with higher gusts. The wind was only one weather factor. The temperature made it to 94 degrees and that combined with the wind made it a less than ideal day to be outdoors. I did do three or four circuits of the nesting area but I didn’t walk around nearly as much as I had been doing. The water on the lake was so rough that there wasn’t a boat to be seen so I didn’t have to worry about boaters wanting to picnic on the nesting beach.

After my first circuit early in the morning and before the wind started I took a ride out into the country. This part of Colorado was in the heart of the Dust Bowl in the 20’s and 30’s and the utter desolation of the area was chronicled in Timothy Egan’s book “The Worst Hard Time”.

The countryside looks a lot better than it did during those hard times but there is still plenty of evidence of it left in the form of abandoned homesteads and prairie school houses. A lot of these buildings were built with local stone that was quarried locally. The picture to the left shows the remains of a prairie school that was named Good Intent School.

The wind thankfully calmed down today….for most of the day. As I write this however, it has picked back up to 35-40 mph. I guess I’m not going to be able to grill that steak I was planning on having for dinner tonight!

Anyway, I was able to spend more time doing my “patrol” and watching the birds. After one circuit I sat down and listed all the different birds I had seen this week. The count was over twenty with a number of them being birds that you just don’t see every day including Burrowing Owls, Lark Buntings and Pelicans….yes Pelicans, in Colorado!

On one circuit I also saw this “little fella”. I’m quite sure he has lots of brothers and sisters in the area and I’m really surprised I didn’t see more of them. I did not however, go looking for them.

Tomorrow morning I’ll pack up and head for home. I have two weeks at home and then I’m off for two Passport In Time projects back to back so I’ll be out for two weeks. More on that later.

Thanks for visiting.

John Martin State Park & Plover Patrol (5/19/2010)

I left the Denver metro area Tuesday morning and headed for southeast Colorado. John Martin State Park to be exact. The park is about 20 miles east of Las Animas, CO and what that means is that I don’t have a whole lot further to drive to get to Kansas, if I want to.

I arrived in early afternoon and was told that I could take the Camp Host site which is nice because it’s the only site with both electric and water in the entire campground. The Host has not taken up residence yet for the summer season. The campground sits right below the dam for the reservoir and it’s an eerie feeling to look up from a camping spot and realize that there is almost 100 feet of water just on the other side of that wall…over your head.

More eerie things happened as the evening approached. First the wind started absolutely ripping through the campground. My trailer was really rockin & rollin! At about 6:30 pm one of the park rangers came by and said that there was a storm 20 miles to the west with a potential tornado in it and everyone in the campground needed to go to the restroom/shower building for safety. For the next two hours the few campers in the campground stood around the restrooms looking at the sky and listening to the park ranger’s radio. Luck was with us as we got wind but nothing else. We could see that about a half mile north of the campground they were getting rain/hail/lightning but fortunately the tornado did not appear. The wind continued until after 9 pm before it finally quieted down for the evening.

At about 5 am this morning the wind started again and it rained…..poured, for about four hours. My Plover Patrol was not starting out very well! At about 10 am the local Division of Wildlife biologist showed up at my trailer and without much ado we headed out to survey the Plover Nesting sites.


Before I go any further I need to clarify exactly which Plover I’ll be patrolling this week. In previous posts I have called it the Mountain Plover…Wrong. On arriving here I was informed that the bird of interest is the Piping Plover. This bird is classified in The Sibley Field Guide to Birds as “rare” and listed by both the Federal Government and Colorado as “Threatened”.

As we drove to the first site, the biologist told me that there are only 12 confirmed Piping Plovers in Colorado. The total US population of this species is only about 2500 birds.  All of the Colorado Piping Plovers are right here in this small area of the state. Of the twelve that are known to be in Colorado, I saw six this morning in between rain showers. I wasn’t able to get a picture of one of them this morning because of the weather but hopefully sometime in the next couple of days I’ll get a good picture to post.

All of the nesting sites have been cordoned off by the biologist but “fun seekers” plying the waters of the reservoir have been disregarding the signs and ropes and have picnicked and camped in these areas. My job over the next few days will be to visit these sites several times a day. If I see any human activity I’m supposed to contact the local DOW enforcement officer by phone and not approach or even speak to the people violating the restricted area. In between my visit times I’m free to do whatever I want and I have a list of some local places I’d like to visit so hopefully there’s more adventure to come.

Thanks for visiting.

Update To Stormy Weather

The pictures to the previous post were taken at about 9:30 this morning. At about 10:30 things got a bit more interesting…..and it’s still coming down!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m REALLY glad I decided not to go to Trinidad this morning!

Thanks for visiting.

Don’t Know Why There’s No Sun Up In The Sky…

“Stormy Weather” is the title of the song that uses the post title for it’s first line. Originally written in 1933 and performed by the great Ethel Waters, it’s been covered by a gazillion of singers since. Here’s a particularly good rendition by Lena Horne in 1943…Despite the title it’s really a love song that uses weather as a metaphor.

The song and lyrics stick in my mind for an interesting reason. In the early 1980’s I had a routine outpatient bit of surgery done under minimal local anesthesia. It was so minimal that I experienced a bit of discomfort. To help overcome the discomfort I concentrated on the music that was being piped into the doctor’s office. You got it, Stormy Weather! Since that experience, whenever I’m trying to divert my attention from something unpleasant I think of, hum or sing the song. I’m thinking of the song now but the unpleasantness I’m diverting my attention from is…..stormy weather, not love.

Springtime in the Rockies has messed up my weekend adventure! The DOW project I was supposed to attend with The Bride this weekend was cancelled yesterday due to potential wet weather. The Bride and I decided that if the weather weren’t too bad we would go to Trinidad anyway and explore the town. Yesterday afternoon the system moved in with some pretty severe thunder storms. It would rain, thunder and lightning for a half hour or so, then clear up for an hour or so, then storm again. This morning we had some snow and heavy rain and the forecast had changed to the system not moving on until tomorrow afternoon and the mountains are expected to get 14”-28” of snow. Need I say more? The trip has been cancelled altogether.

My weekend was not messed up near as much as the weekend for Too Tall-Two Timing and K. See the comment about “thunder and lightning” above? Well the lightning part struck Too Tall and K’s house and caught the roof on fire. K was in the basement at the time. Too Tall is out of town on business. The Fire Department responded and put the fire out but not before an undetermined amount of damage was done to the roof and top floor of the house. There are at least three big holes in the roof…see my comment about heavy rain this morning.

The good news is that The Circle is here to help them as needed. Two Tall-Two Timing will be back in town today and the insurance adjusters will assess the damage today as well.

“Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky………”

Thanks for visiting.

Chatfield Camping & Bosque del Oso

Our Circle The Wagons campout with The Circle was a success. Nothing spectacular but a low key fun time. We all arrived Friday afternoon and after setting up camp, (see photo above) we all got together for libations and a grilled dinner.
Since I have not had the chance to use the grill that came with my trailer, I volunteered my grill as the official cooker. I must say that I wasn’t very impressed and am thinking that I may just go back to my portable Coleman grill for future trips. I do like the fact that the trailer grill taps into the onboard propane supply so I don’t have to worry about bringing…or keeping up with a separate fuel supply but overall it was a pain to set up and I don’t think it cooked very evenly.
The highlight of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, was the Saturday afternoon/evening festivities. As I mentioned in a previous post, The Bride had already volunteered our trailer for the gathering spot since it was the biggest. She also volunteered to be the dinner hostess and provide the main course…made from scratch lasagna.
To get us all in the mood for Italian food we watched the movie, The Big Night before dinner. It’s a great movie that revolves around one terrific made from scratch, authentic as it comes, Italian dinner.
After watching the movie I think our guests had pretty high expectations for dinner and they weren’t disappointed. Maybe it wasn’t as fancy as the dinner in the movie but everyone enjoyed it. 
Sunday was a lazy morning and we got together late for a group brunch before we tore down camp and headed home. This will be our last Circle The Wagons trip for a little over a month. In July we have already planned two events in the mountains. More on that later.
The Bride and I are feverishly trying to empty cabinets in preparation for the contractor to start installing granite countertops and a new backsplash in our kitchen.
I say feverishly because on Friday we’re headed to Trinidad Lake State Park, just west of Trinidad, CO and about 200 miles from here. That will be our base while we do volunteer work for the Colorado Division of Wildlife at the Bosque del Oso Wildlife Area. We will return late Sunday afternoon and finish up preparations for the contractor then.
It should take the contractor about a week to do all the work and him done or not, I head out for a Forest Service gig a week from this Sunday. Busy, busy, busy….but more on that later too.
Thanks for visiting.

Another Passport In Time Project!

I received an email today telling me that I was chosen for another Forest Service Passport In Time (PIT) project! This one is in South Dakota and involves restoration of an old gold mine and mill.  The project actually lasts for two weeks but I signed up for the week of June 21-25.
This will be my seventh PIT project and will be the furthest I’ve ever travelled to get to one. The project is located about 35 miles south west of Rapid City SD and it will take me two days to get to the project site.  I’m already looking at the calendar and trying to figure out if I can add several days to the trip so that I can take in some of the other attractions in the area.
There will be plenty of adventures this summer!
Here’s the official write up for the project.

Black Hills NF

Gold Mountain Mine & Mill Restoration Project, Phase II

June 14-18; 21-25
Must commit to one full session; may participate in both
Please join us in the beautiful high country of the Black Hills for the second year of the Gold Mountain Mine and Mill restoration! The mill served the historic Gold Mountain Mine during the "Gold Rush" of 1875, and is the last "living" ore-processing mill on the Black Hills National Forest. The structure is one of many that stood here during a prosperous period of the gold-mining industry in the region. The wood frame of the mill still retains many of its original features, including its ore crusher, ore shoots, and distribution gates. Today, little else remains beyond the mill and its associated features, and the area's history is quickly slipping away. However, in 2007, the Forest Service and local volunteers began to explore plans to restore and preserve this unique site. In June of 2009, the plans became action. Phase I of our project consisted of a detailed survey to fully record the site and its features and preliminary restoration of the mill frame. Additionally, volunteers removed overhead hazards and emptied an estimated 12 tons of ore and debris from the mill, and planning crews began efforts to interpret the site for visitors.
During Phase II, we will continue to restore the mill structure and develop means for the site's interpretation. Restoration will focus on the mill-frame structure. The surviving original components will be removed, treated, repaired, and replaced using power and hand tools, though we will also bring in heavier equipment, such as cranes and bobcat tractors. Simultaneously, those assigned to interpretive crews will do historic research, develop trail plans, and design signage and other displays. This area of the Black Hills offers many popular attractions and boasts some of the best scenery to be found, and early summer here features warm days and cool nights, perfect for enjoying yourself around a camp fire! So, whether you're back for year two or will join us for the first time, we look forward to seeing you in June!
Number of openings: 20 (10 per session)
Special skills: Participants must have an interest in learning! Construction, carpentry, woodworking, art, and/or research skills helpful, but not required
Minimum age: 18 years old
Facilities: Tent and RV camping at no charge at nearby FS campgrounds; drinking water, toilets, no hookups; private campgrounds available nearby; facilities vary with campgrounds and may or may not include pit toilets, water, and/or RV spaces/hookups; reservations recommended; Hill City, Custer, and Rapid City are full-service communities with hotels/motels, restaurants, and a full range of other amenities; volunteers responsible for personal camping equipment, food, and transportation
Nearest town: Hill City, 5 miles; Custer, 20 miles; Rapid City, 35 miles

In a couple of hours I’m off to Chatfield State Park for a Circle the Wagons get together. Check back in a couple of days for a report!
Thanks for visiting.

Spring Has Sprung…For Now

Ah, the sound of songbirds early in the morning. Buds on the trees. Daffodils breaking through the soil….These are all signs of Spring but nothing is more telling about the departure of Old Man Winter and the arrival of that sweet nymph of Spring than the relative position of my snow blower and lawn mower in the garage.

The picture in the upper left shows the lawn mower promoted to a position of prominence in the front of my garage whilst the snow blower is now relegated to a back corner along with the snow shovels. If that is not a sure sign of spring, I don’t know what is.

Oh, we may still get some snow but my experience is that anything we get now will either not stick to paved surfaces or if it does it will melt in a couple of hours. If I weren’t reasonably sure of this, the lawn mower would never have been moved to the front of the garage.

Speaking of the lawn mower, I have to give credit where credit is due. This piece of Sears/Craftsman machinery is about 16 years old now. Unlike children of the same age, it has never been to the lawn mower doctor. It hasn’t had an accident or been pulled over by the police. It’s appetite is downright bulimic. The only thing it consumes besides some of my time, is a tiny amount of gasoline and in those sixteen years, about one quart of oil! To top it all off, it responds to me without argument in no more that two pulls of the starter cord…..every time, for sixteen years. If children could only be like this lawn mower, the world would be a far better place!!!

Even though spring has sprung life is not all green grass and daffodils. There’s still some iffy weather to contend with and unfortunately we will have some of that this weekend, just in time to threaten The Circle’s first Circle The Wagons camping trip. From this weeks highs in the 70’s with brilliant skies, we will descend into the low 60’s with rain.

The good news is that the campground is just minutes from the house at Chatfield State Park. Too Tall-Two Timing, Guitar and myself, his-self, made reservations for camping over a month ago. We knew the weather could be iffy but we decided that if nothing else we would watch movies, have some great dinners and conversation and generally chill out.

Since my trailer is the largest, The Bride and I will host the main dinner on Saturday night. The Bride has chosen an Italian theme for the dinner and we may precede the dinner with a showing of one of my favorite movies, The Big Night. It’s a relatively unknown film but is a great story and contains wonderful Italian music from the 1950’s. It should certainly get us in the mood for some Italian food. Check back next week for a report on our adventure.

Here’s some other signs of the springing of Spring in my yard today…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for visiting.

Winter’s Last Gasp?

This was the scene when I got up this morning. Another spring storm is blowing through the mountains and across the eastern plains. Just one last reminder from Mother Nature that she is in complete control and even though most everywhere else spring is in full bloom, only SHE will decide when we can put away the ski parkas and snow blowers!

She has been teasing us over the last few weeks but as the weeks pass the teasing becomes more bearable. Three weeks ago we would have three or four days of winter weather with one or two nice days. The situation now is that we get three or four days of nice weather followed by one or two of not so nice.

This system will be long gone by this afternoon and by tomorrow there will be absolutely no trace of the snow you see in the pictures here. It’s a little different in the mountains however. They are getting anywhere from a foot to two feet of snow out of this…..and that’s the way it should be. That’s why God made mountains. They are supposed to get huge quantities of snow which equates to water for us down in the lower elevations. Colorado weather is a marvel. Look at the pictures above and then look at the prognostication for the rest of the week.

If you remember from an earlier post, during the last storm my snow blower self destructed and I had to order a very expensive piece of small plastic to get it back working again. Well I received the part and installed it and everything appears to be working fine. Even though this snow will be gone by this afternoon without any help from me, I think I will fire up the snow blower just to be sure is works. It would be a bummer next fall at the first big storm to find out that the snow blower isn’t working right!

On the household front, The Bride and I are preparing to have our kitchen upgraded with granite countertops. We have lived in this house for 14 years now and still have the original Formica countertops which we have never liked. We have spent the last six weeks or so looking at different materials for both the countertops and backsplash. The sheer number of possibilities is truly amazing but The Bride finally has found a combination that she likes and we will meet with the contractor tomorrow to finalize the project.

I’m currently refining some of my travel plans for next month. On my last trip to Arizona I had planned on visiting Canyon de Chelly (pronounce canyon de shay). The same Mother Nature I referred to in the beginning of this post had other ideas however, and I never made it. This destination has actually been on my “to do” list for several years but it’s pretty remote and the weather window for a pleasant trip is pretty narrow.

During the first week of May I will be participating in a Passport in Time project just west of Taos, NM. That’s about half way to Canyon de Chelly from the Denver area. So, my current plan is that after the Passport in Time project I’ll continue south and west to Canyon de Chelly and spend two days there before heading back home. The weather should be perfect by then and the rest of the summer is already pretty well booked up with other adventures so I’m thinking this is a good plan.

Thanks for visiting.

Visions Of Springs Past

First of all the weather shamans were mercifully wrong on their forecast for last Saturday. We got a dusting of snow, but nothing really stuck to the road and driveway surfaces. This was one time I was happy that they got it wrong!

Sunday it started to warm up and it has been absolutely beautiful since then…so beautiful that yesterday I got a severe case of road trip fever. Since it’s still too early to try a trip to the mountains I decided on a day trip to the Eastern Plains of Colorado. For some time I have been wanting to investigate a small ghost town that I read about that’s about 150 miles southeast of the Denver area.  It’s a long drive but it was just what the soul craved. Miles of deserted road and visions of springs past.

Aroya began it’s life as a small railroad camp for workers laying track for the Kansas and Pacific line. The name itself is a bastardization of the Spanish word arroyo for “gulch” and the town was built next to a gulch.

The heyday of Aroya was around 1912 when it boasted a dozen or more businesses including a hotel, a blacksmith shop, a school and several mercantile stores.

The town went steadily downhill from there on. The Great Depression took it’s toll and by the 1970’s there were just two old men living there. The last resident, “Red” Morland, the son of one of the town’s pioneers died some years ago and Aroya became a true ghost town.

The town sits about a half mile off a main state highway (the fact that the highway bypassed the town also helped in it’s demise) on a lonely dirt road. I arrived just about noontime and the weather was perfect….high 70’s, sunny with a stiff breeze. A lot of the town land is now private, so I did not have total access to all of the buildings but it was enough to make the trip well worth the while. The private part belongs to the J.O.D. ranch. The ranch is historic in itself, having it’s start in 1866 and continuing to this day as a real cattle ranch.

I spent well over an hour wandering around thinking about springs past. Imagining the residents of Aroya going about their business. Thinking about their struggles and their hopes for the future. Children were born here, grew up, married, had children of their own and died. This place is more than a bunch of broken down old buildings. It was a vibrant community that is now gone. As cars speed by a half mile away they have no idea that this place exists….but I do.

Driving back home I went through numerous other small prairie towns that were saved from Aroya’s fate because the highway didn’t bypass them; Hugo, Limon, Simla, Ramah and Callahan. At each and every one I took the time to turn off the main street and explore the “guts” of these old towns. Each had their own memories of springs past.

It was late afternoon when I returned home. The road trip fever has been tamped down for a short while….but there are other ghost towns on the Eastern Plains that I think I need to “discover”.

Thanks for visiting.

Same Ole Same Ole

So we got 12-15” of snow early in the week and then we had two days of nice weather (high 50’s). Time for another storm! This one is not supposed to be as bad but the weather shamans are saying I may be looking at 5-10” on the ground by tomorrow morning. I hope they’re wrong this time because I haven’t gotten the parts for my snow blower yet and anything that ends up in the driveway will have to be dealt with manually.

While I don’t really mind the winters here or the snow, this time of year it’s hard because of the teasing that Mother Nature does. It would be one thing if it were just crappy weather all month long but the Spring weather that is wedged between the frequent storms gets my hopes up that it will be an early end to the snow and it will be RV season again.

Hopefully, this storm will be the last of any consequence because The Circle is planning on a Circle The Wagons camping trip in three weeks. This will be a local camp out at Chatfield State Park which is only a couple of miles from here…..about 8 miles to be exact.

The picture at the top of the post is a shot from the roof of my trailer “Bivouac”. It not only shows some of the snow left from the last storm but It shows the new wiring job on my solar panel. The original wiring was located under the panel and went through the roof and towards the back of the trailer. This new wiring goes to the front of the trailer and down the plumbing vent stack in the middle front of the roof.

The picture to the right shows the new Tristar TS45 Solar Controller installed in the basement storage area. The battery compartment is behind the wall to the left of the controller and the red “knob” on the left of the picture is a Perko battery cutoff switch that allows me to shut off or disconnect the batteries when the trailer is stored. That prevents the batteries from being completely discharged by things like the fire and CO2 alarms that cannot be turned off inside the trailer. 

Finally the picture to the left shows the remote meter that is installed inside the trailer. This digital display tells me all sorts of information about the charge state of the batteries, how much charge the solar panel is providing to the batteries and how much electricity is being used by all the electric things inside the trailer. It will also track this information over time. Cool stuff!

I expect that to be able to boondock for extended periods I’ll need at least one more solar panel but before I spend the money for that I will spend some time testing out the one panel system. The good news is that there is plenty of room on the roof for several more panels and it’s simple to add panels to the base system I now have.

Thanks for visiting.