Month: October 2013

Notre Dame vs Air Force (Toby’s Visit)

October 30, 2013 / admin / 3 Comments

My Notre Dame – Air Force ticket stub

Our son Toby drove to Colorado from South Bend, Indiana, for a quick visit and to attend the Notre Dame – US Air Force football game. He had purchased tickets for himself and me, planning a father-son outing.

We met at a motel in Castle Rock, located about 20 minutes north of the Air Force Academy, on Friday. There was enough time that day to drive to the Sanderling lot and show Toby around, after which it was dinner and back to the motel.

Saturday we had breakfast before heading to the Academy. I had never been on the grounds before, and we had planned stops at the visitor’s center and chapel. (The chapel is the iconic image of the Academy.)

There were a lot of Fighting Irish fans at the visitor’s center. Many sat with us through the A/V presentation “A Year In The Life of a Cadet” shown in the center’s small auditorium. Next a short walk brought us to the chapel.

Chapel at Air Force Academy

I must say the chapel is more impressive from the inside than the outside. The use and placement of stained glass is not apparent from the outside but is a key feature. While not large the chapel is impressive!

Toby inside the Air Force chapel

Artistic use of stained glass

After taking a walk around the Academy campus we returned to the car and drove back to the parking area near the stadium. Toby was on the lookout for a Notre Dame tailgate party we could join.

Now I have never tailgated in my life, so this would be a new experience for me. Turns out there is a large cadre of Notre Dame fans based in Denver. We headed toward a Notre Dame flag that was flying from the top of an SUV. Asking around, we were quickly introduced to the guy who had more or less organized this outing of fans. He said we were welcome to join in so we introduced ourselves and made ourselves at home.

I met people from Alaska (they were headed to Moab for some bike riding after the game) and quite a few characters who had come to see the game. A total of about 70 people eventually made up this particular group. With the talk, food, and adult beverages it was a good way to kill a few hours before kick-off.

“Irish” cupcakes were dessert

Around 2:30 we headed for the stadium to find our seats and get settled. Toby had pretty good tickets for around the 30 yard line behind the ND bench. We could see all the action at both ends of the field.

Here are a couple photos taken during the course of the game:

Players take to the field

Notre Dame cheerleaders urged crowd participation

Scoreboard showed replays, stats, and advertisements

It was a very enjoyable afternoon; the weather was great for football. Notre Dame won by a score of 45 – 10. The Air Force Drum and Bugle Corps provided a peppy half-time show. After the game and after the traffic queue out of the stadium area we stopped at Applebee’s for a late snack, watched the end of the world series game back at the hotel, then retired for a night’s rest. Sunday morning Toby and I had breakfast then parted ways– me back to De Beque and Toby off to Longmont (NW of Denver) to see some friends before he headed back to South Bend.

All in all it was a very enjoyable event. Toby and I had a chance to talk and catch up with news, enjoy the tailgating and football game, and just generally have a good time. Weather was perfect all weekend. The game went well and we met a lot of interesting people. Best of all Toby and I spent some time together.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

And I had a weekend to myself (if you don’t count all the animals in my care), so it was a win-win-win.

Happy trails.

Regular living

October 22, 2013 / admin / 2 Comments

I went to the lot this past Saturday to try and get our last 2 loads of slash over to the burn pit. Alas, there were not enough volunteers to keep the pit open all day so one load is all I was able to transport. Looks like the other pile of slash will have to wait until spring to be disposed of. All the leaves are off the trees – fall has come and gone in the high country – and there was a bit of snow on the ground in shady spots. I did a bit of other clean-up work, had lunch in the RV, and then headed for home.

Leaves are off the aspen.

The remaining pile of slash is at the lower-center part of the photo. With the leaves off the trees, we can appreciate how much of the lot we cleared this year, but there is still so much to do!

Pam’s “fall home upgrade” project continues; we moved the computer station around a bit. We had kept the previous configuration for many years so you know what the floor looked like when we started moving the desk, 2-drawer file, and other furniture around. Yep…enough pet hair to create a small kitten. New arrangement looks good, though, and should work better than the old one. Pam still needs to locate a small table to complete the set-up as she needs space to spread out paperwork when she works from home. Table needs to be narrow and no more than four feet long, not a common size, and will take a bit of shopping to find one with the correct dimensions.

Ebony’s kittens are starting to move around and get out of their box. They are singularly common-looking black cats and it remains to be seen if they can develop any personality traits that might set them apart from other kittens.

One of Ebony’s kittens

Speaking of kittens…

I was going through some archive video and came across a couple cat-related clips taken with my old Flip recorder. Here is a 49 second vide clip featuring two of our house cats, London and Antonio, from 2006:

I have a few of these that I will include in my posts from time to time. I hope you enjoy them.

Our son Toby should be here later this week for a visit and to take in the Notre Dame – Air Force game on Saturday. After that Pam and I are planning a Halloween trip to the lot (weather permitting) to make sure everything is OK and do some clearing on the path where we hope to extend the driveway next spring. We would like to extend the drive a couple hundred more feet and get closer to the saddle. This would get the RV more into the woods — our RV pad would then be less exposed from the road. The extended drive would enable us to get to the upper portion of the lot for downed wood removal. And, last but not least, an extended circle drive would mean no more backing the RV uphill after taking it to clean out the tanks.

Back on the deck in De Beque, we have built small fires in the fire pit a couple times. It’s nice to have a fire to sit around on weekend mornings and enjoy a cup of tea. Due to fire restrictions and so much to do we never had the opportunity to sit around an open fire at Sanderling this summer.

The days pass and life goes on. Some trees are dropping their leaves in the high desert but not enough to get out the mulcher and get started on lawn raking. Temps have improved a bit; most of the upcoming week will be in the low 60s and above freezing at night, but a couple ski areas have opened and winter is not that far away. (I did get up to the roof to replace missing shingles over the weekend, a task mentioned previously.) Now is the time for me to stop procrastinating about some needed but long-deferred dental work. I’m not looking forward to those sessions but they have to be done.

Next post should have details from Toby’s visit.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

(Note: Pam said she does not have a Two Cents Worth comment for this post.)

October Lull

October 13, 2013 / admin / 2 Comments

We are home this weekend taking care of chores and finishing small projects. Here is what we have been up to.

Last Friday night we delivered our last big load of firewood to Kathy Hall. While we will probably be up to the lot a couple more times this fall we probably won’t be bringing home loads of wood, just some wood in the back of the truck, so this is the last major load of the year.

Load of wood in the truck

Fully loaded trailer

Pam came up with the idea to put vertical pieces of wood around the perimeter to increase the load capacity of the trailer — else we would have had to make two trips. Over-all we delivered between 2 and 3 cords of wood to Kathy this year. This wood will help keep the kitties warm in their rescue building.

A home visit by a potential kitten adopter late in the summer led Pam to formulate a “home upgrade” plan for this fall, as she realized the place was embarrassing and dumpy looking. So far she has purchased a new hallway runner, a couple of rugs, a new cover for the couch, and yesterday I picked up a fire pit from Tractor Supply (upgrades the deck?). A few more purchases are planned, and coupled with a major re-arrangment of existing furniture, the house will have a new look for fall.

New fire pit

We also bought a Keurig (K-cup) brewer. I have had one at work for years courtesy of the company, but Pam thought it was time to have one at home as well. We are not coffee drinkers but like to have tea, hot cider, and hot chocolate on hand. I think we will get a lot of use out of this purchase.

Otherwise it is more of the mundane. I winterized the swamp cooler, went to Walmart to pick up cat supplies, washed the truck by hand, did the normal auto routine (oil levels, washer fluid, tire pressure checks), put away the fans and brought the heaters down from the garage attic. I spread the last of the grub killer and lawn fertilizer before I put the spreader away. Today I need to change the Honda oil and filter, clean the mower decks, and paint the snow plow blade that is mounted on my little red Gilson lawn tractor. (The paint is a super-slippery type designed for snow blades.) Maybe I’ll even get back on the roof and replace several shingles lost in one of the summer storms.

Ebony’s kittens have their eyes open and are just starting to move around a bit. I’ll have a few photos of them in my next post.

Sinbad the Cat has gone missing, along with another adolescent kitten that was living in our garage. We know a couple other cats are missing – flyers in the Post Office and people out looking for their cats – and suspect foul play but have no proof. It could be Sinbad was picked up to be a house cat as he certainly was friendly enough. We hope that was the case. Not knowing what happened is hard for Pam.

There has been snow around us but so far none down at our level. Below freezing temps at night are now pretty common. Weather people say we are having below average temperatures and the extended forecast shows this trend continuing. We are not ready for winter and keep hoping for a spell of Indian Summer. Pam has been covering some of the flowers and plants to try and keep some color around the house. How much longer this will be feasible is in doubt, but it’s nice to still have some Mums and other flowers still giving us some color.

Leaves are beginning to fall and I suspect I’ll have to start raking and mulching in the upcoming weeks. Our neighbors have already left for their place in Arizona (which they do every year), and I take care of their leaves as well. It’s a busy time of year.

Our son Toby had plans to be out for a visit near the end of the month, near the date of his birthday. He and I would attend the Notre Dame – Air Force football game in Colorado Springs, but we haven’t heard if Toby has firmed up these tentative plans. We’ll have to wait and see what transpires in that story.

The truck had been running poorly and the engine light had been coming on. I bought one of those code readers and eventually found one of the O2 sensors had come unplugged. Fixed that and the truck is again running fine. Code reader was $18.00 from Amazon; the local Ford dealer wanted $118.00 (1 hour of labor) to hook the truck up to their system and trouble-shoot the problem, so I figured I saved $100.00 by doing the work myself.

So, life goes on. Pam is entering a slower part of the college calendar as far as transcript evaluations are concerned, and I just finished a major project of getting our Rifle Sheriff’s Office Annex wired with fiber-optic cabling to our internet provider. (Connection went from 4.5 mb to 500 mb.) Now I can get started with other projects that were dependent on getting the high-speed connection in place, but those can wait a week or so. So, for both of us, there is a lull in the action. It won’t last long, but we hope to enjoy it while we can.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

When the Habitat Recycle store has better furnishings than anything in your house, it’s time to upgrade a bit. What with puppies and kittens running around the place the last 5-6 years, I’ve been letting “style” slide. The mobile is clean (wet mopped with Pine-Sol every other week) but shabby. And not shabby chic. So I decided just because we live in a mole-on-the-bum-of-Mesa-County type town doesn’t mean we need to descend to being low-lifes ourselves. The refurbishing is greatly overdue and, in the scheme of things, won’t cost as much as mountain land, an RV, or a truck.

Happy trails.

Fall Colors at Sanderling

October 6, 2013 / admin / 3 Comments

The fall colors are at their high point here in Colorado. Cold has also come in the form of snow and temperatures below freezing, temps in the teens in the high country. This set off a scramble for me to get to our lot and winterize the RV trailer.

I had driven up with the Honda on Wednesday, October 2, as I needed to turn on the RV’s furnace. A few days later, Saturday the 5th, I went up again with the truck to finish the winterization tasks and bring home a load of firewood.

Winterization of an RV includes taking the trailer to the dump station and draining all the holding tanks. I drained the hot water heater, fresh water tanks, and used the built-in water pump to put RV anti-freeze in the water lines. All “freezable” items, food and bathroom, were removed and brought home. A few other items were brought home as well, such as coats and sweatshirts. When we go to the lot again we will just have to bring a few more “things” along with us, but I think the cold temps have pretty much put an end to any major work outings.

The highlight of both trips was viewing the fall colors. Below you will find several photos and a video (run time 7:15) of the fall colors around and on our lot.

Sweep of color down to South Park

View from RV trailer is excellent

View from RV trailer main window

Aspen along “wilderness road”

Our tree-lined driveway

(Incidentally, the driveway was formally approved by Park County this past week, one year after we applied.)

Leaves starting to fall off trees

These next two photos show the difference between where we have cleaned up the down dead wood and trees and where we have yet to work.

Note dead and down trees on ground. This is the “before” photo

“After” photo. Note cleaned-up ground under the trees

I shot some video around the lot. Here is a 7:15 clip taken over both trips.

Pam says I am getting a little out of hand with videos, so let let me know if I should continue to include them, if you don’t view them, if you have trouble viewing them, or any other feedback you think appropriate.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

I was going to drive up to Sanderling (with the dogs, in the Honda) this weekend and join Jer at the lot, but the hard freeze in De Beque required me to stay home and make sure the plants/kittens/outdoor cats stayed warm. Early weather reports also predicted snow flurries over the mountain passes, and I’m not much of a winter snow driver. As it turned out, no flurries and I may have missed the golden aspens in the grove we’ve been working on all summer. Maybe next year.

Sinbad, the outdoor adolescent kitten we just paid to have neutered, disappeared this week. Why is it, just when you spay or neuter an animal, it either disappears or gets hit by a car? When the sadness of rescue (death and disappearance) is not balanced by the joy (births and adoptions), it’s time.to.quit.

Happy trails.

Summer coming to an end

October 1, 2013 / admin / 3 Comments

Animal Band Mural

What’s this ? The City of Glenwood Springs has, for the last year or so, embarked on a beautification program. Part of the project includes painting scenes on building walls and overpasses. This whimsical work or art is actually on a railroad support which is part of a span over the Roaring Fork River. Most of the panels are more true-to-life, depicting outdoor scenes, horses, and other western-themed icons. This particular panel can only be seen from the walking path along the river, a path I often take on lunch time walks. I like the walks and the mural.

It has been a busy summer, but the first freeze has come and gone and there is more snow on the mountain tops. Fall colors are at their peak. Summer has ended, fall is here, and winter will be here before we know it.

This is, in many ways, my favorite time of the year. The autumn-blue skies with the vivid aspen colors contrasting against deep-green pine backgrounds makes for great views. (The leaf-peepers are out in full force.) The aspen on our lot are beginning to change colors but are not yet at their peak color; that will probably happen this week. A trip over is planned for this upcomming weekend.

I did make a solo trip to Sanderling over the weekend of September 28 – 29. Three more loads to the burn pit and another load of wood brought home, plus turned the furnace on in the trailer to keep it from freezing up at night. Weekly forcast shows a warming trend – cold came early this year – and we hope to have another month before we have to winterize the RV. Winterizing will mean pulling the trailer over to the dump station, draining all the holding tanks including the fresh water supply, removing all the food and bathroom items that might freeze, and making sure all the water lines are blown dry. Process will take several hours.

In my previous post I had a video clip of the morning sunrise on a cloudy day. This time, for comparison, I took a clip of a sunrise on a clear day.

Ebony’s kittens opened their eyes this past week. All black except for a few stray white hairs here and there, they will be harder to adopt – distinctive kittens go more quickly – so Pam has decided to give them extra socializing attention in hopes they will be so adorable their color won’t hold them back.

Speaking of kittens, in addition to Ebony’s four, Pam has two kittens from the shelter, both on meds, in our “cat” room. Another neighbor who fosters kitten had to be gone for the weekend so we had three of her kittens with us. Total of nine kittens in the house for the last few days. Good thing we had stocked up on cat liter. The five older kittens are all very social and like to be held and petted and are pretty attractive cats. Add to this total our seven and Ebony and we had seventeen cats in the house over the weekend. That’s a full house. Mix in the three dogs and you have a menagerie.

Our County animal control officer, Aimee, calls Pam “The Crazy Cat Lady.” This may be true, but Pam hopes, as most rescue and foster care people do, that some day this work won’t be needed. However, as long as people don’t spay/neuter their animals and then dump them when they become inconvenient there will be cats running loose. Four litters this year were from two domesticated cats who were dumped. Pam was able to rescue two of the four litters but just one of the non-rescued litters added four more cats to the outside population. (The mom cats Pam has rescued have been or will be spayed before being released to the outside world again.) Not ideal, but we do what we can to provide food and shelter and medical care to these outside cats. Pam will try to trap the four kittens over the winter and have the vet spay/neuter them.

If there is an entrance exam to get into Heaven I suspect one question would be “How did you treat your pets?” I believe a number of people would flunk the quiz based on their answer. At least from De Beque…

I’ll end this post with a few photos from my last ATV trip into the Colorado mountains.

Lake City side of Engineer Pass

Bull Moose along Cuba Gulch

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Wanted to give a shout out to Tabitha’s mother who apparently reads this blog regularly. She no doubt wonders why two old folks would buy land at over 9,000 feet elevation. Or why anyone would have seventeen cats in the house over the weekend. Then again, being Tabitha’s mom, she might understand about the cats.

Happy trails.

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Month: October 2013

Notre Dame vs Air Force (Toby’s Visit)

Regular living

October Lull

Fall Colors at Sanderling

Summer coming to an end

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