4th of July Weekend

Pam and I had taken July 2nd off as vacation days, and since both of our organizations gave us July 3rd as a paid holiday, we had a long weekend to do “stuff.”

Our arrival at our Sanderling mountain lot Thursday afternoon had one hitch — found out the Honda needs a new radiator cap. More bad news: a mouse somehow found its way into the RV trailer, leaving a few turds. I don’t know how it got in. We never did see or trap it, and it’s possible it left after finding nothing of interest. I set a couple of traps set in case the animal makes a return visit.

Pam is still quite bothered by an inflamed bursitis in her right hip and this limits her mobility. We had not planned to work on any major projects but she did get several smaller tasks done, including transplanting some shrubs and a small tree into the circle in the middle of the driveway loop.

Rain made its appearance in the early evening, a shower that lasted for more than an hour. We are happy to get the moisture up there, but it brings out mosquitos, something we have not had to deal with in previous visits. I guess you have to take the bad with the good.

Friday was a road trip day to view at some for sale houses Pam had seen on line in high country towns along I-70. We visited Idaho Springs, Silver Plume, Empire, and Central City. These towns are all within about 30 miles of each other; most of the driving was to get from The Lot back out to the interstate near Frisco, driving time is about 90 minutes for that leg of the trip.

The houses were a mixed bag. All these towns are old mining communities and the houses are on small lots and close together. One place, in Silver Plume, was Pam’s preferred “grandma house,” with frontage on Clear Creek, but had a heavy dose of mosquitos outside and dropped ceilings and dark paneling inside. Not to mention the constant drone of interstate noise…

Silver Plume house

Blondie checks out the yard.

This road noise from the interstate, which is just across the creek to the left of the house, is a huge drawback.  (Did I mention the clouds of mosquitoes?  Haven’t seem them that dense since living in the Midwest.)

A nicer structure, also in Silver Plume, was this house on Madison Street:

Madison Street home

It is a cute place, a bit further from the interstate and no creek frontage, but no garage and no place to put one. This seems to be a common problem with most of the properties we looked at, not surprising given the nature of the towns, but a negative for me.

However, later in the day in Central City we looked at a place that originally had a carriage house:

House on Spring Street

Carriage House on Spring Street

The carriage house would take care of our storage needs for sure!  The owners of the two structures, the Central City Opera House Association, are trying to sell the two separately which would put this arrangement out of our price point.

Pam liked the porch entrance of this Central City house:

1800s Central City house upper level

Lower level of the 1800s house

This house typifies Pam’s “grandma house” standard – bay window, ornate porch, eave treatment with shingles and/or lace-like filigree.  This particular house is a duplex; we ended up talking to the older gent who lives in the bottom half of the property. He gave us much information on Central City’s current services offered to residents (such as they are).

We looked at a number of properties and I will not get into a description of all of them. Suffice to saw we made a day out of poking around in all of the communities mentioned above. The weather was high country beautiful and, as is usual in summer, we had another shower on the way back to Sanderling.  We also saw some beautiful flowers and scenery. One place, an old mining claim, had a brilliant mix of red, blue, and white columbine blooming along side the driveway.

Columbine in three colors blooming in Empire

The blue columbine is Colorado’s state flower so I am partial to the species in general. The day was a successful outing as a scenic day out, not so successful in thinking about finding a house in one of the mining towns.  Generally, the streets are narrow and/or in poor repair, the residential homes are extremely close together, and the prices have shot up dramatically since our last visit to these areas some decades ago.  Services are limited, and that includes a decent mountain medical clinic and hospital.  In some places, like Central City, historic district overlays make it nearly impossible to even so much as take down a “historic” outhouse if one remains on your home site.

That evening, back at Sanderling, we had a nice sunset with clouds over South Park.  Rain continued later that evening and into the night hours.

Sunset, July 3rd

Saturday morning was a work half-day around the lot, cutting trees and getting piles of wood staged. (One pile for disposal at the burn pit, the other to be salvaged and cut into firewood.) I mapped out and cleared a trail for the ATV and trailer to navigate on a future trip when we will be able to load up the burn pit wood and get rid of it. The work was enough to bring out a sweat but, as we have seen in the past, worth the effort.

We had planned to come home Saturday afternoon to avoid the heavy Sunday traffic, so after a meal of bratwurst, (cooked over an open fire) potatoes, and fruit we cleaned up, shut the trailer down, and headed home. Per usual, it was difficult to leave the high country, but another round of showers was headed our way so off we went.  Just past where the Sanderling road connects with a state road, we made a quick detour and drove through an upscale housing development – Silverheels Ranch – which is very close to Fairplay, for a look-see.

Today (Sunday) we will work on all of our “normal” weekend chores and relax a bit before the work week begins again.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

The search continues.  I could live in a smaller house, Fields needs quite a bit of outside storage.  The small populations in the mountain communities don’t support many services.  Living close to the interstate puts services within driving reach, but the noise of the traffic is a constant background irritant.  Old houses, while charming, all pretty much need immediate maintenance.  What is with “renovations” of dropped ceilings and dark paneling circa 1970?  Those “upgrades” destroyed many an old house we have viewed.  For us, it would be a strip down job back to the wall studs and “begin again” to make the house reflect the period it was built.  Do we have a major renovation still in us at this point in life?  Unknown.

Happy Trails.