Crystalline Magic

This morning was breath-taking.

We awoke to a foggy, cold morning here in Trinidad, Colorado.  I let Les sleep in a little longer as  he didn't sleep well the night before.  And as we were preparing for our usual walk with the dogs, I told him that I'd rather go up to the property to walk.  When we go up there, we don't have to worry about one of the dogs choosing to poop right in the middle of the street as we cross.  (Don't laugh... it happens quite often!)  There's nothing worse than holding on to a young dog who hates the leash while trying to open a little plastic bag to pick up poop.  And doing that while you're watching for cars, or.. worse still, having a car wait for you as you scrape poop from the middle of the street is just awful.

That, and Mindy gets to run to her heart's content.  She loves to run!  Schultz has a blast up there, too.  They play and play.

But back to our gorgeous morning... while it was foggy here in town this morning, it was really foggy up the mountain.  And an amazing thing was happening up there.  On the east side of everything was a blanket of crystal.  It wasn't exactly snow and it wasn't exactly ice.  It was just crystal and it was exquisite!  It was on the trees, on the scrub oak, on every blade of grass and every dried flower.

 This is what they call here a "freezing fog."  And it was beautiful.

Just a Blur

Mindy girl is about 8 months old now.  We knew that a blue heeler/border collie mix would be a very active pup.  I just don't think we were aware of how much.

 She and Schultz get along really well together now.  He even allows her to step over him as he sprawls out in the hallway.  Until she got the nerve, she would whine and bark imploring him to move so that she could get by.  Sometimes he'd oblige -- usually he wouldn't.

 Now she playfully hops over him and sometimes even gives him a little nip on her way by.

Taking pictures of her is a real challenge.  I try to have my camera with me whenever we go up to the mountain.  But try as I might, I have yet to get a really good picture of her because she's moving all the time.  I either get her head as a big blur or just the back end of her as she's leaving the frame.

 Schultz is easy to photograph.  He stands there... he does what he's told... he's nice and mellow now.

Mindy... that's another story entirely.

The Boys

We were blessed to have our boys here for Thanksgiving.  Les came home from California by way of Boise Idaho in order to drop Andrew's drums off and to bring him here for Thanksgiving.  We hadn't seen Andy since our official move date of June 10th.  He's been keeping himself busy in Boise... looking for a job... playing with a band.

DJ took a week of leave from the Army and headed down here to Trinidad from Fort Carson near Colorado Springs.  It was so good to have our family together again.

I cooked a near-perfect Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all of the trimmings.  Our friend, Jim, joined us for a meal.  It turned out that he was making his rounds on Thanksgiving Day as Joelle was out of town.  I know Jim attended at least 3 meals that day -- the boy must have been hungry.  Probably didn't eat for a week afterwards!

 The day after Thanksgiving was the tree and train lighting ceremony near City Hall.  Trinidad has a steam engine and a few old rail cars sitting near the river.  They light it up for Christmas along with a very large fir tree.  Many of the people from town gathered to watch as carols were sung and the tree and train were lit with sparkling white lights.

Andy fresh off the truck from Boise.

 Mindy and Schultz were happy to have the boys here as company.  I took many pictures of them, but then I realized that nearly every single picture I took of Mindy was blurry.  This creature does not stand for pictures.  Pretty much, the only time she's still is when she's sleeping, or if food is just about to hit her bowl.  What a character!

Les after being gone a month.

There's my Schultzie Boy!

What a Goof!!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas Parade

It seems like this lovely little town will use any excuse to have a parade!  Labor Day -- have a parade!  Homecoming -- have a parade!  I love it!

We went to see the "Parade of Lights" for the Christmas Season.  Main street was closed off and many, many people braved 25 degree weather to see the lights as they made their way down the street.  This was our first Christmas parade here.  It did not disappoint.

I was thrilled to have our whole family together for Thanksgiving.  After a month in California, Les drove home by way of Boise to pick up Andrew and to drop off his drums.  They hit heavy weather on the trek home from Idaho, but arrived safe & sound.

 DJ took a week of leave from the Army.  He and Andy spent quite a lot of time together.  It was so good to have my family around.  Our house is very little, so we could not offer them a bed, but they made the best of it in our recliners and on the floor.  No one complained

This little trailer drove up and down the street offering cookies and cocoa.

Only in Trinidad would you see a porta-potty in a parade and dressed up in Christmas lights! 

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First Snow

The temperatures have been dipping into the low 20's at night time.  Being mid-November, the locals have been commenting about the lack of snow.  Last year, it snowed in September.  This year, nothing so far.

I enthusiastically watch the weather.  I have no idea why, but weather fascinates me.  It's probably because we never really had weather in California.  It was nearly always 78 degrees and sunny.  In the winter, it rained some.  But it never really seemed like "weather" to me.  But I'm always checking www.wunderground.com or www.weather.com.  I know, weird, huh?

Here the weather is really something interesting.  It's changing and diverse.  We get rain in the summer.  It snows in the winter.  Fall is actually a season here!  Can you imagine??

So I watched as the weather websites were calling for snow and/or rain last night and today.  I couldn't help myself but to drive up to the property to see the clouds for myself last night just before dusk.  There was a bright glowing spot where the sun was setting and it was giving off brilliant hues of yellow and gold.  And to the north of that you could clearly see that it was snowing on the Sangre de Cristo range.  Finally, the snow was on its way.

I awoke this morning at 7:00.  Got dressed and opened the door to take the dogs for their walk.  And it was snowing!  Big fluffy flakes falling to the ground.  Schultz didn't pay much attention to it, but Mindy was wondering what the heck was going on!

We walked our usual walk down by the river.  I could feel the snowflakes softly fall upon my face.  There was only a tiny bit of accumulation on the ground, but I didn't care.  It was snowing.  The trees are starting their long winter sleep.  The landscape is changing.

I know that all too soon I'll be longing for spring.  But for now, I want to just enjoy the snow.

Halloween

All Hallows' Eve is a big thing in this quaint little Colorado town.  I think it's just because these people like to party.  It seems like there's always something going on.

This year Halloween landed on a Sunday.  The town, however, celebrated the entire weekend.

Earlier in the week I noticed yellow notices on each of the lamp posts on Main Street and on Commercial Street.  Where these streets intersect is the heart of downtown Trinidad and is the oldest and busiest part of the town.  These yellow notices told of the closure of the streets on Friday in order to celebrate Halloween and have a safe haven for the kids to trick-or-treat downtown.

So on Friday at precisely 2:00 in the afternoon, the two busiest streets in the town were blocked off and the celebration started.  Children and their parents were happily collecting candy and treats from the local merchants. 

But one thing I noticed among all of the smiling faces.  Most of the kids' costumes were home-made.  And these home-made costumes by far outshone the cheesy masks I was used to seeing the kids wear. 

There was a young man wearing a box on his torso and his head.  He wore aluminum ducting on his arms and legs and aluminum foil on his hands and shoes.  He made the perfect little robot.

Another youngster was dressed as a refrigerator.  Her head was in the freezer part of the fridge along with a package of Hot Pockets, Kid Cuisine and a severed hand neatly wrapped in a grocery store meat package.  On the front of the fridge was a child's drawing held by magnets.

Cat Woman made a brief appearance as did Mr. T's youngest protege. 

In the street and every 10 minutes, a group of kids made up like zombies danced to Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  What a huge party!

At 5:00 the bank held the costume contest.  The lobby of the bank was absolutely packed with kids and their parents.  The winners landed on the front page of the local newspaper.

The following night was for the adults.  A costume party benefit was held at one of the local art galleries.  But before that was a "Pre-party party" at a different art gallery.  DJ was here for the weekend and we just decided to stay home and watch a movie, though.  I'm such a fuddy-duddy sometimes!

Halloween night I stayed in.  I did not turn on my front light as our stairs from the street are old and steep.  I didn't want any children to chance going up or down the stairs with their masks on.

All in all, it was a fun weekend.  This is such a lively -- and lovely place.

Home

So for all intents and purposes, this blog was supposed to be about the building of our new straw bale home.  However as I've written before, the current U.S. economy brought that dream to a screeching halt and added a few more years onto an already anguished wait.

 

Yesterday I took the "kids" up to the property.  It is, after all, only about 4 miles from this very spot.  But sometimes it seems to hard to make the time.  Yesterday, though, I made it a point to make the time.  Especially since we had such a fierce wind-storm earlier in the week, I wanted to make sure everything was OK up on the property.

There was a fresh blanket of white laying on the mountain range to our west.  The Spanish Peaks had snow above the tree line.  The brilliant white was a vivid contrast to the electric blue of the sky. 

The dogs and I walked our building site and then up the driveway to a spot that has a majestic view.  I could hear the breeze through the trees and the calls of the birds.  Occasionally a jet would fly by way, way overhead. 

And then it hit me.

While I've been selfishly lamenting the delay of our house, my wonderful husband has been working hard to make what we already have into a home.  He has spent many back-breaking hours clearing the circle in the driveway.  He's dragged probably tons of rocks to make steps and paths throughout our land.  He's made rock walls, sitting areas and drainage canals.  He's even set our yard decorations artfully and playfully about.  All these things make a space a home. 

I love him so much and I'm so blessed that he loves me, too.

Winter is Coming

This morning I awoke to find the needle on the thermometer hovering right around 28 degrees.   Brrrr!  They said that it would be a cold night both last night and again tonight.  Whoever "they" are -- apparently they're right. 

Les left for California early Sunday morning.  Just a few short hours went by before I realized that I missed him already.  I wasn't sure what to do with myself on Sunday.  So I took a nap and watched movies.  Sounded like a good idea. 

Then later that afternoon my friend Joelle, her mom Yolande and I took a drive up Highway 12.  I've already written about how spectacular Highway 12 is and this day was no exception.  We turned off of the road just before Stonewall to see the elk.  Joelle told me about a couple of times she drove up that road to see literally thousands of elk gathering to "sort things out" about who was going to be with whom this season... if you get my drift. 

I think we could have gone up a few weeks earlier and had more success because we saw only one herd of elk.  Standing in the valley before us and quite some distance away, was a group of about 30-35 elk.  They stood in a very tight circle and standing off to one side was a magnificent buck.  Things had already been sorted out as far as he was concerned.  He was keeping his herd together and from what we saw, there was nothing to dispute.  This was his herd and that was that.

As we drove further up the valley we saw many groups of deer and a couple groups of turkeys.  Now what do you call a group of turkeys anyway?  A herd?  A gaggle?  A troupe?  That's what I think I'll call it -- a troupe of turkeys. 

Unfortunately I was not able to get a good picture of the elk and only a so-so picture of some deer.  Too bad, too.  My camera has died and all I have is my iPhone to shoot all of my pictures with.  It's good in a pinch, but it sure doesn't have the quality that my camera had.

Regardless, the fall leaves were spectacular.  The serenity of the mountains was calming.  Watching Mother Nature do her thing is just something I've missed for so long.

Puppy Joy

Did you ever wish you had been born a dog?  Sometimes dogs just seem to have it made.  Their people feed them, pet them,  clean up after them and all they need to do in return is eat, sleep, bark at the mailman and be cute. 

Mindy is just such a dog.  Schultz is now the now the older, wiser, more mellow guy.  Mindy, however, is a bouncy, carefree pup.  She doesn't walk anywhere -- she runs.  Her life's goal is to have as much fun as any dog can possibly have.  She harasses Schultz to no end.  To watch him walk down the sidewalk one wonders at the patience he has with this young ball of energy.  She dances from one side of his face to the other, but he passively endures her goofiness and only occasionally let's her know "ENOUGH!"

Being a rescue, you never really know the dog's history.  Mindy was picked up as a stray in town, but it's very apparent at this point that whoever threw her away never abused her otherwise.  We're pretty certain that she's never had a hand raised to her and I think that's one the reason she's so carefree.  This dog doesn't have a worry in the world.

Yesterday she saw the vet to be spayed.  That really took the wind out of her sails.  She was so sick yesterday after her surgery.  And as she slowly walked the few steps she did she looked pathetic with her head hanging low.  Then this morning she was up and ready to be her usual self again.  You'd almost never know she had surgery yesterday.

And tonight, Daddy's girl is sleeping peacefully in Daddy's lap.  Schultz is sleeping peacefully on the floor.  And soon we'll be sleeping peacefully in bed.  Good night to all.

Fall Colors

The other day Les and I took a drive on our favorite road.  Highway 12, otherwise knows as "The Highway of Legends," has some very beautiful scenery.  And with fall firmly upon us, the colors were spectacular!

As you start on the drive from Trinidad, you follow the river up the valley.  Farmhouses and small communities dot the bucolic setting -- some nearly new and some well over a century old.  Some of these homes were built in a factory and some were built from Mother Earth with mud and straw and sweat.  Some are loved and cared for -- some have long been forgotten.

As you pass through the small villages of Primero, Segundo, Weston and Stonewall, the homes and farms begin to diminish leaving rich, untouched Colorado scenery to appreciate. 

In Stonewall, there is a stone wall.  (Who would have thought?!)  This wall, built by God from volcanic rock, is one of many that meander across these Southern Colorado mountains.  Rich colors adorn the wall.  In many places, the wall is a sheer drop 100' on both sides.  In other places, the wall has been worn down by wind, rain and by time to just a few feet -- however it is no less magnificent.

One of the legends of this stone wall has to do with the "Devil's Stairs."  It is said that long ago the devil came from Hell and used the stone wall as his stairs.  He sat upon the mountains and surveyed the land.  God learned of this and saw the beauty of the valley and the mountains.  He took it as His own and forbade the devil to ever appear there again.

Barela Picnic

We were honored to be invited to the Barela annual picnic this year.  Our friend, Carlos, owns 10,000 acres just east of town.  (Can you even imagine??  10,000 acres!)  Every year he gets together with some neighbors of his and they butcher a pig.  They roast it to perfection and then everyone brings something to eat.

We met with our friends in town, then caravaned out to the picnic.  We went maybe 15 miles out on a dirt road.  The land was flat and treeless.  When we finally came upon the gate to the driveway where the hosts lived, we turned in and drove about another mile or two. 

Just as we came over a small rise the farmhouse and barn lay before us surrounded by huge elm trees and a little stream.  It was such a lovely, bucolic setting for a big picnic. 

I'd say there were nearly 200 people there coming and going.  Some were playing horseshoes, some were hiking the surrounding area, some were playing ping-pong on a table with empty pop bottles for a net.  People here are unpretentious and very laid back.

There was so much food!  Virtually all of it was home-made, too.  My friend Angela told me a story about how, a few years ago, she had been recovering from an illness just before going out to this picnic.  She didn't feel well enough to bake a dessert so they just went to Safeway to buy a pie.  She placed it among all of those home-made goodies and at the end of the picnic, her pie remained untouched.  How funny! 

I brought over 4 dozen deviled eggs I made that morning and they were gone quickly.  It's chili time in this part of the world so there were lots of dishes with green chilis and some with jalapenos.  Many salads, fruits, vegetables, beans, rices -- the tables were packed!

I peeked around the corner to see several teenage boys, completely covered in mud from 4-wheeling, hovering over the dessert table.  They wanted to make sure they got all of the good stuff first.  But that was fine... there was plenty for all.

One of my favorite parts was to see a big, old, Ford pickup completely loaded with pumpkins, watermelons and cantaloupe.  Everyone was ordered to help themselves to all they wanted.  This part of the country has some of the best cantaloupe and watermelon I have ever tasted.  We've been enjoying that watermelon for a few days already... yum!  And I'll be cutting into the cantaloupe later this afternoon.  Oh it's so tasty and sweet.  Delightful!

Fall

Well... September 22, 2010 fell upon us with a cool, crisp grasp.  Nights are very cool, getting into the 50's and even once or twice the 40's.  Days are still on the warm side in the upper 70's and low 80's. 

The leaves are starting to turn.  We see patches of gold and orange on the mountainsides as the aspen trees get ready for their winter sleep.  What a beautiful sight!  Near the river the cottonwoods are still a deep green, but they'll be turning soon, too.

This will be our first cold winter in over 30 years!  While we both grew up near Chicago, we haven't been in the ice and snow for a whole winter in a very, very long time.  I'm not too concerned, though.  Our little brick house will probably be quite comfortable.  Of course, not as comfortable as our cozy strawbale home, but that will come... eventually.

Up to this point, I haven't closed the windows yet.  We like sleeping when it's cool outside.  I don't mind having the windows open at all.  I'm sure Les will let me know soon enough when it's time to close them.  Cool, fresh air!  I LOVE IT!

Les is looking forward to one more motorcycle ride up the road pictured above before winter.  Last year, it had already snowed by this time.  This year it's a little warmer.

I'll keep taking pictures and posting them as fall matures. 

More later...

Labor Day Parade

Don't you just love a parade? 

Labor Day brought with it the annual Labor Day Parade in downtown Trinidad.  Les and I grabbed the dogs and walked 2 blocks toward downtown so that we could watch our first Trinidad parade.

The atmosphere was one of excitement as the crowds gathered.  Of course, it could have just been me as I've been imagining watching this parade for 5 long years.  It started right on time with a fanfare of emergency vehicles all waling away with their sirens.  Police cars, fire trucks, rescue vehicles and search ATVs -- just to mention a few.

There were many displays of horses as this is a ranching area.  There was a big, black cow pulling a cart and even an alpaca came to show off.  The floats consisted of a flat-bed trailer, bales of straw and cardboard exhibits.  There was even a big cement mixer with American flags on the front fenders and a smiling driver throwing candy out the windows at the crowd. 

We saw some local school marching bands, a dance troupe from the local studio, and many, many happy, smiling faces.  Small town parades -- I'll take this over the Rose Parade any day!