Month: October 2014

Wednesday morning, October 29.

We are heading home today. Right now we are trying to stuff everything back in our suitcases and wondering how everything fit in the first place.

Yesterday was a driving day. We left the Homestead area and arrived in Tallahassee in late afternoon, just over 500 miles. Note: There are no hotels around the regional (small) airport. We drove into town and stayed at The Baymont, a lower-priced hotel but it served us OK.

A recap of Monday: We had headed for the Florida Keys. The result was a mixed bag, not quite what we expected, which was to see a mix of older fishing villages and sand beaches. That’s not what we got.

The place is highly commercialized. We did have an excellent fish lunch (in a place suggested by a local) and the beach at Ft. Taylor (Key West) was nice and we spent some time there, but the rest of the time we were a bit disappointed with how expensive everything was. Live and learn!

Our itinerary for the return trip has several links: first Tallahassee to Orlando, then Orlando to Denver, and finally Denver to Grand Junction. We gain 2 hours moving from Eastern time back to Mountain time, but it willl still be a long day.

Once we get home there will be a lot of work to do, but I hope to go through our photos and videos and post a few photos (and eventually a video) filling in our our experiences in more detail.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Take away signs from the south on stores/shops:  “Git and Go,” “Git and Split,” and “Yoga, Y’all.”

Happy Trails.

Sunday morning, October 26.

Friday we spent the whole day at Epcot Center. It was an interesting experience! We did lots of walking, looking, and some eating. We finished the day by going into some of the halls and taking the simulated rides (first manned trip to Mars, Planet Earth, and Universe of Energy) amoung them. The last bit of time in the park visit saw us sitting on a bench that overlooked the lake and watching people flow by. It was a full day.

Saturday we drove to Brandon (near Tampa Bay)  to visit my niece Jennifer and her husband Jeff. We met their daughter, Rowan, a bright girl of 12 (going on 13.) We enjoyed this visit; we had not seen Jennifer and Jeff since their marriage.

Today we drive to southern Florida. There are several venues  that we will have to “pass” on this visit including Sea World, Universal Studios, Busch Gardents – Tampa, and probably the Everglades. We don’t have the time to take these in, maybe next trip  (if there is one.) Our plan for today is to get down to the Homestead area at the end of the Florida mainland. Monday we will drive out to Key West and work our way back up to the mainland.

Tuesday will be another driving day as we will head north to Tallahassee  and get ready to fly home on Wednesday. Sad to say our trip is getting close to being over.

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

Friday morning, October 24.

Tuesday’s trip through Gulf Shores was pleasant but the top stop of the day was at Ft. Walton Beach. After getting our feet wet in the surf we lunched at a place called The Crab Trap which is located right on the beach. Food was excellent and we had a great view of the ocean and split time between eating and watching the people on the sand.

Wednesday  night we stayed on St. George Island at the Buccaneer Hotel, located right on the beach. The hotel was OK but basic. We grabbed a couple of sandwiches from a local pizzera and called it a night. In the morning we stopped at a local grocery, bought a few items , and had breakfast on the beach. The ocean side beaches are not quite as pure as the gulf side beaches but that is OK; there was more surf and more sea shells than on previous beaches. Breakfast on the beach was a nice way to start the day.

We reached our friends in the Orlando area last night after a day of driving across a lot of the state. (Lots of driving.)  Mary and Jeff were expecting us and we had a good conversation along with some tea and dessert Mary had prepared. Their house is right on a small lake and I am sitting outside enjoying the views as I type this.

Today it is off to EPCOT Center, a visit that will take most of the day. We will return to the Hayes House tonight when we are done, then tomorrow it is off to visit my niece Jennifer and her family who live in Brandon. Although the distance is not great, Mary and Jeff  indicate that I-4, the main route to Brandon (the Tampa-St. Pete metro area) is often very slow on weekends and the trip could take several hours. Hopefully it will not be that bad, but we shall see.

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

Just the first of a couple quick posts from on-the-road. We flew into New Orleans on Sunday night. Monday we did the French Quarter, including Burbon Street, and walked the River Walk. We took one of the carriage rides and listened to some street music. Let the good times roll.

We also drove up along the Mississippi, but because of the levee system we did not see much of the actual river, a disappointment.

Tuesday AM we toured a plantation (Houmas House) and had a great lunch on-site. Then it was off driving our next link, up to Baton Rouge then east on I-10.

Pam had spotted an alternate route on the map that followed the Gulf so we got off the superslab and took this much nicer route which gave us views of the ocean. At one point (Long Beach, Mississippi) we pulled off and walked the white sand beach barefoot. It was a great stop.

Last night we stayed in Foley, Alabama, and today we head for Pensacola and places east — into the Florida panhandle.

I’ll have another quick post in a couple days.

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

This post is pretty mundane; just a collection of notes about projects and activities of the past week.

I’ve been working on The Box and managed to replace all 3 roof vent covers. All were either cracked from a hail storm or, in one case, a chunk had been broken out. The job was not too bad  and took about 20 minutes per vent but it did involve me getting on the roof of The Box and I am not comfortable on roofs. I’m glad to have that particular project done.

Other minor repairs have also been completed. One of the window shades had died  and would no longer go up and I fixed it. (When we first bought The Box a few shades had the same problem and I had contacted the manufacturer about fixing them and they sent me repair instructions.) Another repair involved the outside lights; one of them had a frozen on-off switch and would not turn on. It works now, giving us some outside light should we need it. I ran RV anti-freeze through the pipes to finish winterizing the plumbing. Pam removed all the food and bedding and we even took the mattress out and put it in the sun for a few hours. I tracked down and replaced a blown fuse that had caused my phone charger to quit working. Only a few tasks remain, including replacement of a cracked sky light and getting new front stabilizer jacks. Once I get the parts it will be only a matter of a couple hours to finish these repairs. Hopefully it will warm up enough to “set” the skylight sealant after I get it installed — or that job may have to wait until spring.

Pam has also been busy. She transplanted the bulbs that were in our hanging flower pots into our regular flower beds, and cleaned the beds of no-longer-needed summer growth.  The lilacs were interfering with me getting on the roof of The Box so Pam took her loppers and trimmed these bushes as well. It made getting up and down The Box’s ladder a much easier task.

Daughter Felicity arrived Tuesday night via the Grand Junction airport. She will be here for a couple of weeks while Pam and I take our 40th anniversary vacation trip, a long-planned event. Felicity will be caring for the cats and dogs and watching the place while we’re gone. Since she works on-line she can continue to do her work from anywhere she can get an internet connection, so this visit won’t interrupt her job. As of Thursday morning one of the cats, Sunny, was still hissing at Felicity but all the other animals have “adopted” her with no issues.

Pam and I will fly into New Orleans and play tourist, visiting the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. After that we plan a leisurely trip visiting beachy tourist areas while we head to Florida (via rental car) where we plan to visit our good friends Mary and Jeff Hayes. Epcot center is on the “to visit” list. We’ll also go south to the Keys and perhaps visit the Everglades. I’ve never been to this part of the country and am looking forward to the trip. (EPCOT is an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.”)

This means no posts for a couple weeks, but when we get back I should have a lot of photos and experiences to share.

We’ve had frost a couple of nights, leaves are beginning to fall on our lawn, and Halloween decorations are appearing on some houses and in yards. Pumpkins are on sale everywhere. I put new filters in the furnace and vacuumed out the floor vents. (We turned on the furnace the night of the 14th.) Fall is here. I’m not sure I am ready for it; I miss my summer weekends in the mountains.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Totally tourists, that will be our motto for the upcoming adventure. We may never pass through the Gulf Coast states again; if this is our one shot, we’d best make it a good one.

Happy Trails.

I must admit…there isn’t much of anything interesting going on right now! I started to work on cleaning out The Box and began a few repairs including putting new screening in the main door (where Auburn Jo ran through it- door was closed at the time – that dog has mental issues). I’m waiting on the new roof vent covers so have not started to start that replacement project. New front stabilizer jacks have to be purchased and installed; I bent the two of them when I tried the new driveway before it was ready. There are other assorted tasks to do as well such as checking all the lights and switches; one of the outside lights (there are two) had quit working.

As Tabitha mentioned in her last comment, it’s sad to be removing all our stuff;  it means the summer has come to an end and so have, for the most part, our trips to The Lot for this year. The forecast for Sanderling Court includes snow over the weekend  – so I did get The Box home at an opportune time. A few day trips will have to suffice [to check on the mountain property] but these will be more casual trips, taken mostly to get out of De Beque for a day.

Right now The Box is parked on the edge of our driveway but our snow-bird neighbors, who left for Arizona this past week, offered to let us park it on their property (across the street from us) for the winter. This would have a few advantages: The Box would be behind a fence, limiting access from passers by, and it would free-up our driveway for parking and snow removal. It would also keep the grass underneath The Box from dying and leaving a bare spot when we once again take The Box up to the mountains.  When the repairs are complete I plan to follow up on this offer.

The Box at home, fall 2014

Otherwise it has just been regular chores including lawn moving and weed whacking. I drained and prepared the swamp cooler for winter and cut up and delivered the last bit of firewood I brought home a couple weeks ago. Next up is changing the furnace filter and vacuuming out the floor vents before we have to fire up the furnace for the first time this season.

Pam laughs at me, but I did some rehabbing on my old Craftsman saw. A few posts back I mentioned it had died. Well, I found a “parts” saw on eBay and bought it. The Craftsman is now back in operating condition after swapping out the clutch, replacing one of the two bolts that hold the bar and chain in place, replacing some missing screws in the recoil and body of the saw, and using the air filter and it’s cover from the “parts” saw. (The filter is better than the one I had and the cover had been MIA for many years.) I probably overspent – $43.00 for the parts saw with shipping – but I hate to throw things out that can be repaired and put back in service. I finished cutting the last of the firewood using the old Craftsman just to make sure it was working OK. It’s actually running better than it has in several years.

Rehabbed Craftsman chain saw

It is good to have some down time. Imagine…sleeping in till 7:00 or 7:30 on a Saturday morning! We lit fires in our fire pit a few days this week and sat around watching the sun set. For the first time in months I did not have to drive anywhere this past weekend, a very rare occurrence. (I did fire up the 8N Ford tractor to take a bin of grass clippings to the compost area, and took off on a 2-hour ATV trip out to Wild Horse Mesa as I can ride the ATV directly from my door to get there. I don’t count these as “driving” events as  the Honda, the motorcycle, and the F-150 were not involved.)

In family news:  My brother Jon has finished his chemo and radiation treatments for his neck cancer and recently had his feeding tube removed. Jon reports he is back on solid food but everything is tasteless. A PET scan is scheduled in the near future and if that goes OK he will have the medical port removed. It will take some time before Jon has his energy back and can return to a ‘normal’ life style but I am rooting for him.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

That Craftsman saw is older than our children.

Happy Trails.

I brought The Box back to De Beque this past weekend. With night time temps in the high country starting to get below freezing on a more regular basis (27 degrees this Tuesday night) it was time. Last year we left The Box on the lot but this year there are a number of small repairs that need to be done and they are best addressed near retail stores. Included in the list of repairs are replacement of two crank-open vent covers that cracked during a recent hail storm. The current “patch” of green duct tape on the vent cover is not all that attractive… 🙂

One loose end…

I mentioned we had cleared the path to Pavilion Point. Here is what the path-in-progress looks like.  It needs to be wide enough to drive up with the ATV and trailer [for wood gathering] at some future time. Next year the dead wood will be taken to the burn pit for disposal.

Path to Pavilion Point

Peak colors have gone for this year. Pam chose the best weekend to see the aspen, at their finest fall colors, a week ago. While there are still many patches of color it’s easy to see the spots where leaves have fallen and left the trees bare. The lot is covered with this year’s leaf crop.  Patches of color will remain for a while yet — a couple of weeks — but the majority of aspen have turned. Ski areas will be open in a little more than 6 weeks; snow is imminent in the high country. (Around 6 inches is forecast for this week  in the northern Colorado Rockies around Steamboat Springs.) Here are a couple fall color photos taken last weekend near Vail:

A range of “color” this year

Entire hillsides are now in full autumn mode

We bought the lot on September 14 of 2012. Going through photos taken over the course of the summer, starting with extending the driveway in April, it is obvious we did a lot of work and cleaned a lot of area.  We forget, sometimes, how the lot looked two years ago when we bought it.  No driveway, no shed, no truck, no RV, no dog run….

Lot entrance in 2012

Driveway entrance fall of 2014

Driveway corner in 2012. Note evergreen tree on left.

Driveway curve, fall 2014. Note evergreen tree at left.

Here are a couple driveway extension before and after photos.

Wilderness road marks future driveway in 2013. Note old pine stump ahead of Pam on hillside

Driveway loop, fall 2014. Note old pine stump on hillside for reference.

Jerry putting in driveway extension following wilderness road. Photo by Pam.

Along the way we cleaned out a lot of dead wood. Here is one example of the area we cleaned behind the storage shed:

Area before clean-up

After clean-up, summer 2014.

We cleaned out the dog run area and the slope of Birdhouse Ridge, places in line-of-sight from The Box. The drive extension made working in these areas a lot easier and we removed load after load of dead wood and salvaged quite a bit of firewood as well. While clean-up will continue for years, having the line-of-sight areas cleaned up completes a major milestone in our plans for the lot. It is now a joy to be able to walk these areas without having to navigate over/around dead trees and stumps. We knew, going in, that cleaning the lot would be a major challenge and would take a lot of work, but the results have been more than we expected; the more we clean the lot the better we like our purchase.

Two more projects completed this year were getting the shed in place and putting in the dog run. Pam also put a lot of work into the circle transplanting trees, hauling mulch, gathering and arranging rocks, and bringing up daisy starts from De Beque. (We will have to wait for spring to see if the daisy plants “take” to the high country.)

Circle was pretty bare in the spring of 2014

Circle looking good at the end of 2014

We spread gravel, cut firewood, and made (many) trips to the burn pit to get rid of old wood and debris over the last two years. The improvements are starting to add up, and in a few years we’ll take them so for granted we’ll have a hard time remembering the “before” details. I guess that’s what photos are for!

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Driving to and from Sanderling became a lifestyle this summer.  Every weekend in August, and almost every weekend in September, one or both of us made the four-hour-each-way drive to the high country and back.  This type of commitment required creative scheduling of grocery shopping, yard work, house cleaning and laundry (done during week nights).  It took some planning!  Weekends will seem kinda tame without all the driving/activity, but I think we need the break.

The next few weekends will still be busy — emptying The Box and bringing gear inside for winter storage.  I do believe I might have one of the newest garage cats, a long-haired gray female named Cloudy Day, help me clean out any potential remaining rodents in The Box.  Cloudy Day may have mousing abilities; I believe she is related to Isadora/Izzy, who was euthanized due to illness earlier this year.  Izzy was a superb mouser; we’ll see if Cloudy Day has a similar skill.

Happy Trails.