{"id":4568,"date":"2016-11-20T11:36:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T18:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/?p=4568"},"modified":"2016-11-20T11:36:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T18:36:09","slug":"another-week-another-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/another-week-another-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Another week, another post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving is next Thursday and Pam and I will have a few days off. We’re looking forward to the break even though we have little planned for the holiday.<\/p>\n

Normally Pam puts a roast in the crock pot but our pot died earlier this year; the ceramic pot broke. Pam ordered a new pot but it is back-ordered so we may not have it\u00a0by\u00a0Thanksgiving this year. Oh well\u2026on to Plan B for preparing Thanksgiving\u00a0dinner (whatever that may be\u2026).<\/p>\n

As for the past week since my last post, there are a few points of interest. We had our first snow of the season, very light, but nighttime temps have now been below freezing for several days and it looks like that trend will continue. Winter is arriving here and has already arrived in the high country; several mountain towns report a foot of snow or more fell during this last storm. Time for me to take the mower deck off the John Deere garden tractor and put on the snow blade, wheel weights, and chains. That is my task\u00a0for today.<\/p>\n

I’ve sold my snowmobile; the guy is supposed to be by later today and pick it up. I had really enjoyed riding for several years but have done little riding over the last couple of years so it’s\u00a0better to move the sled along rather than keep it stored behind the house. The proceeds will go toward a brush chipper which will\u00a0aid in cleaning The Lot up at Sanderling.<\/p>\n

I get out with the ATV fairly frequently, which somewhat offsets selling the snowmobile. Last month I joined the Western Slope ATV Association and attended my first club ride yesterday. (Here is a\u00a0link to the\u00a0Club<\/a> web site.) The ride was based out of De Beque, convenient for me! We went into some of the new space I had mentioned in my last post. While the scenery is not all that great I did see an eagle (photo did not turn out well) and passed a few year-round springs I didn’t\u00a0know were in the area.<\/p>\n

The group ride\u00a0also passed an old homestead site, interesting in that the cabin was made mostly out of stone.<\/p>\n

\"Stone<\/a>

Stone cabin homestead, Wild Horse Mesa<\/p><\/div>\n

Not only the material, but the construction is unusual for this part of the country. The walls are double; an outside wall and an inside wall with the gap filled with rubble. This is old country construction that\u00a0I have not seen in western Colorado. Would be interesting to know the history of this place! Just to the right of the photo there is a small stream that appears to run year-round; this supplied water. Best guess is that sheep were run in the area which contains a lot of high plains grass. Cattle may have been run in the area but the consensus was more to sheep than cattle.<\/p>\n

Here is a photo of a couple of us who made the ride. This was taken on a branch off the main trail, that goes up a sand – covered hill (my “sand dune”) and emerges at the top of a rock formation.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a>

Two riders plus Sophia the dog<\/p><\/div>\n

Keith is in the middle of the photo while Steve, with Keith’s dog Sophia, is at the left. Sophia rides with Keith on some ATV trips.<\/p>\n

From this vantage point you can see the “De Beque Arch”, a hole in one of the local sandstone rocks.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The De Beque Arch<\/p><\/div>\n

De Beque is a very small town and this is a very small arch.<\/p>\n

The ride was fairly long, almost 60 miles, and did not require 4-wheel drive during any part but there were a couple of places where low range came in handy. The snow we encounterd made the\u00a0main route muddy so we detoured onto less-used trails that were more grassy and traversed more rock shelves. This approach worked out well and gave us a variety of terrain to ride through. It was a nice way to spend several hours this past Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

When I returned home Pam was outside with the dogs doing some leaf raking to tidy the last bits of the yard, so I pitched in until that job was finished. A final batch of leaves was\u00a0used as mulch for the tree peony and various columbine plants. Anything left over was\u00a0mulched and taken to my dumping area. By the time we finished the sun was setting and it was time to call it a day. As usual it was\u00a0a busy Saturday,\u00a0with lots of outside time and activity.<\/p>\n

A comment\u00a0on the house hunt: It’s been a week of\u00a0doing some background checking on the house we thought might be a possibility (I mentioned this house in my last post). One concern is\u00a0the cistern; I\u00a0looked into the possibility of getting city water (Cedaredge) into the place. Turns out that’s not an option, and even if it was the total cost to connect to city water lines would be\u00a0over $16,000.00. There is another water supplier in the area, the City of Orchard Mesa, and they are doing some research to see if they could connect to that parcel. I hope to hear back from them next week. Water in Colorado\u00a0is always an issue. If domestic water to that location in Cedaredge is that expensive (a well would also be around $10 – $12K) then this house is out of the running (even though we are attracted to the lot and stream). Watch this space.<\/p>\n

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!<\/p>\n

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:<\/p>\n

I had an adventure in pet care this week when I removed Blondie’s stitches. \u00a0After all these years of cats and dogs, I’ve never done stitch removal\u00a0before. \u00a0Luckily it went well; Blondie was very patient with me. \u00a0I don’t do\u00a0needles\/injections either, although as my pets age who knows but that might be an activity\u00a0I need to add to my skill set.<\/p>\n

Our house hunt financing window may be closing. \u00a0The Federal Reserve meets in December,\u00a0when\u00a0home mortgage rates are predicted to go higher. \u00a0With the new administration due to hit D.C. in January, investments are volatile, which will impact one of the funds we plan to use\u00a0for the down payment. \u00a0I kinda figured we should’ve had an offer in play\u00a0by election day this month, and it isn’t as if\u00a0we haven’t been looking continually. \u00a0Figures.<\/p>\n

Happy Trials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving is next Thursday and Pam and I will have a few days off. We’re looking forward to the break even though we have little planned for the holiday. Normally Pam puts a roast in the crock pot but our pot died earlier this year; the ceramic pot broke. Pam ordered a new pot but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4568"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4581,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4568\/revisions\/4581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleattic.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}