End of season

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.