Month: June 2015

Father’s Day Weekend saw me take my first ATV trip of the year on a return visit to Lead King Basin. I had last been to Lead King in 2012.

The late spring snows Colorado received have made for a late spring in the high country. In June of 2012 the snow was melted off the trail, including side roads, and many flowers were blooming. This time around it was different story, with snow still on the trail in places and few flowers blooming.

The upside is that the waterfalls and streams are going full-tilt, and for me, waterfalls and the sound of water flowing over the rocks holds a special attraction, so it was still a great trip.

I have put together a 3:42 video for my ATV Videos page. In addition I have assembled a gallery of photos on my Galleries home page; the direct link is Lead King 2015. For this post I will show just a few of the photos that are in the gallery and add some commentary.

The trail starts at the edge of Marble, Colorado, and passes this lake:

Beaver Lake just outside of Marble

The lake is popular with fishermen, kayakers, and non-motorized boaters. It is a pretty spot.

The entry into Lead King Basin proper is very picturesque featuring white-capped mountains and a waterfall:

Entering Lead King Basin

The melting snows had two effects — the side trails blocked by snow and snow + water on the main trail in many places:

Water overflowing the trail

Snow blocking Sheep Mountain side road

Mother Nature will eventually overtake all of these trails; the Schofield Pass side road was blocked by a rockfall. The Forest Service will re-open the popular Jeep and ATV road later this year.

Schofield Pass road blocked by rockfall

The main attraction in the area is the Dead Horse (AKA Crystal) Mill just outside the old mining town of Crystal City. Here’s a photo of that structure:

Crystal Mill on the Crystal River

The mill generated electrical power for the area mines and has undergone some renovation (primarily a new roof) in attempts at preservation. It is one of the most photographed structures in Colorado, even though it takes a high-clearance vehicle, preferably a 4-wheel drive, to get to it.

I finished my trip with a visit to the old Colorado-Yule marble quarry. This quarry furnished marble for many state and federal buildings and is the source for the marble used in the Tomb of the Unknowns, formerly the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The quarry is now closed and you can’t get near it, a change from my last visit when you could view the quarry and (later) take tours while work was in progress.

Sign approaching quarry

Marble cut and stacked, awaiting orders.

What a great trip; I enjoyed my visit back to the area.

In around-the-house news, I have been working on the cistern trailer – fenders and lights are on order and some painting has been done. The hollyhocks and one lilly are blooming, giving our yard some bright colors. More lilies are budding and we hope to have quite a show in the next few weeks. Other than that, it’s been a pretty routine week.

Craig and Dianne have a weather-tight shell and are beginning the inside work for their new house on “their” lake in northern Wisconsin. Pretty exciting times for them and we are following their saga with great interest.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Temperatures will be in the 100 degree range all this coming week.  Summer has arrived.

In my last post I mentioned we had purchased a cistern and would begin looking for a trailer to dedicate to hauling water. Well, a trailer (of sorts) has been purchased.

The problem I found when looking for a trailer was payload; water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon, and with a cistern of 275 gallon capacity I needed to find a trailer capable of handling around 2,500 pounds. (Total includes the weight of the trailer itself, water, and the cistern.) Not easy to find a suitable small trailer, as I found out, as most small trailers are rated only up to around 1,000 pounds.

A Craigslist ad featured a trailer with a 5,000 pound capacity rating for $100.00. It was on the Front Range (Denver side of the mountains), though, so cost of getting it home would be another $50.00 or so in gas money. Little more than a frame on wheels, the trailer did have a valid Colorado title and a spare tire. I decided to buy it and bring it home. Here is what it currently looks like:

Cistern trailer, early days

I will need to add permanent lights, fenders, and re-do the deck at an estimated cost of around another $100.00 – $150.00. I may even get ambitious and do some painting of the frame and wheels. Once done I will pull it up to The Lot, put the cistern aboard, tie the cistern down with ratchet straps, and see about getting our first load of water. The saga continues…

Catching up with a few other odds and ends…

We ordered our honey wagon kit, which consists of a tank, pump, and hoses. Items should arrive in the next week or so; shipment is coming out of Pennsylvania via motor freight. I’ll have to pick the shipment up in Grand Junction, the nearest terminal the trucking company has. More on this as we move ahead in the coming weeks.

I had mentioned my “new toy”, a power pruner, and for those who are not familiar with this tool, here are a couple photos:

Power pruner

Pruner head

The pruner is an extended chain saw. It does not cut very fast but it does extend your reach and requires less work than cutting limbs with a hand pruner.

On my way to The Lot this past weekend I saw a new sight: Llamas on the open range in South Park, about 5 miles from The Lot.

Open range Llamas

In the 3 years we have been driving through this area I had never seen Llamas anywhere near our lot.The young ones were particularly cute. I wonder if they will become a permanent sight or if they just escaped from a farm for a few days and will be captured and removed from the open space. It would be nice to see them from time to time.

I had stopped by The Lot on my way back from getting the trailer mentioned above. By that time is was early evening, around 4:30 PM. Plan was to get some work done, stay the night, then head home Sunday morning, but alas, continuous rains pretty much killed any activity for Saturday. I like getting the moisture but it makes for a pretty dull day. Still, I donned my rain coat and walked around the lot for a while. The “wet forest” smell was strong and not unpleasant.

On Monday, the 15th, we had a visit from a good friend of more than 30 years. Bernie (Bernadette) Davis was Pam’s first boss when we moved to Colorado in 1977 and we have kept in touch through the intervening years. Bernie was on a business road trip and was able to stay overnight. Pam prepared an excellent meal and we had a good visit. Here is a photo of Bernie:

Our friend Bernie Davis

Around the house, the iris are done blooming but the hollyhocks and lilies are just getting started. We have received more rain so everything is still very green. Wildflowers in the area, and also in South Park, are putting a lot of color in the landscapes. They are nice to see!

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

At long last…
This weekend we took The Box (the RV trailer) back up to Sanderling, our 9,000+ feet mountain lot in central Colorado. Here is how the weekend went.

I had taken Friday off as a day of vacation (as did Pam). We had The Box ready to roll shortly after 9:00 AM and off we drove. The trip went smoothy enough – not a lot of road construction slow-downs – and we arrived at Sanderling by around 1:00 PM. After leveling The Box and unpacking a bit, this is what our parking spot looked like:

The Box at Sanderling, June 5th.

Note the overcast skies. There were rain showers on and off both Friday and Saturday. Sunday was nicer but it started to get windy about the time we had to leave for home.  Evenings were brisk; although temperatures were above freezing at night, it was still necessary to run the furnace.

As expected, it was a busy weekend. Friday was mostly set-up and walking around the lot. We were surprised; a major wind storm must have passed through and there were a lot of snapped-off branches and some aspen leaning at sharp angles. I had to cut the top off one of the”circle” aspen just to get The Box positioned at the top of the driveway.  Must have been a very powerful microburst, by the looks of the downed aspen it occurred while the trees were budded.  We lost large branches of many mature evergreens in this event.

Saturday I headed to Lafayette, a town north of Denver. As part of our new master plan, I had decided to get a 275 gallon cistern to use to supply water to the trailer. This is a work-in-progress and will involve getting a trailer to haul the cistern into Fairplay to get filled. Here are a few photos of us unloading the cistern into temporary storage – our on-lot shed:

Cistern is a food-grade IBC tote.

Pam helping me unload the cistern

Once a smaller utility trailer is acquired we will have the tank filled (Fairplay sells bulk water), place the water tank upslope of The Box, and use gravity to fill the in-trailer water tank. Stay tuned – more on this project in future posts.

Pam brought flax and poppy plants along to plant in the circle:

Pam planting her flax starts in the circle

I tried out a new toy, a powered pruning saw that I had purchased at an auction and gotten running.

Jerry using new toy to cut dead branches. (Photo by Pam.)

These saws can be purchased new for around $460.00; I have about $40.00 tied up in this one. It is a Maruyama ( pronounced “morey-ama”) multi-cutter and the product line includes several attachments. I have the chainsaw-pruner head, which will come in handy for helping to clean up The Lot.

Here is another shot at work with the pruner, also including a pile of broken limbs from the windstorm:

Jerry working the pruner behind a pile of snapped-off tree limbs (Photo by Pam)

Another errand this weekend was securing our annual burn pit pass. The burn pit is the local method for disposing of downed and dead wood and encouraging forest fire prevention in the mountain subdivisions around South Park.  Future weekends will include driving piles of slash and junk wood from the Sanderling lot to the pit for disposal.

Not all work and errands this weekend, though– we spent some time just enjoying being back in the mountains again. Pam suggested the following shot, taken this Sunday (June 7) morning:

Pam and Jerry enjoy the view from The Lot

All -in – all it was a good weekend: The Box set up on the lot, a few tasks completed, and a few other projects advanced. It’s good to be back in the high country.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

I am always amazed at how much work it takes to organize and stock The Box.  We forgot to bring a few non-crucial items this time, on the whole we are stocking a bit lighter than in the past.  Here’s hoping the local mouse population doesn’t find The Box this year!

The mountain dog pen fencing is now fixed well enough for the dogs to be penned occasionally.  Last year a deer (? – we think) ran into the fence at speed and really made a mess of one side.  Fence repairs are adequate for the moment; that area of the property may be used for a car port in the future as it’s fairly flat and accessed off the driveway.  The dog pen will likely end up elsewhere and have to be taken down and put up again anyway.

Happy Trails.