Month: November 2017

Coal Canyon is located about 25 minutes west of our house off I-70 but I had never ridden the BLM trails in this area. Given that the BLM would be closing the gate by the end of the month I decided a Sunday morning ride would be a good way to spend the morning of November 19th.

Start of Coal Canyon

The area is not very scenic and very little remains of the coal mines that once dotted the area. The mine sites have been closed and bulldozed flat (these were pit mines, not shaft mines) so no structures remain. Still, it was a bright, if chilly, day and I looked forward to the ride.

Coal seams are present along the ATV trail and it is not hard to see why coal was mined in the area. Known as the Cameo Plant, for years a coal-fired electrical generating plant was located a couple miles away from the trailhead and used local coal as fuel. (The plant was dismantled and removed a  few years ago.)

Black coal seam along trail

The main trail offers two side trails to explore, one going up either side of the canyon. The western side trail terminates on a ridge that overlooks Grand Junction and offers interesting views of the Grand Valley.

Grand Valley, Colorado

The eastern trail just ends at a washed-out gully. Faint traces of the trail can be seen on the other side but I simply turned around and headed back to the main trail.

East trail ends at this point

The upper end of the main trail follows a wash that is passible when dry and shows signs of rock erosion from the seasonal stream that must flow through it in the spring or during times of heavy rain.

Rocks along wash show signs of erosion

Finally, after climbing out of the wash and heading uphill, the end of the main trail offered this view with Grand Mesa in the background:

Views from end of Coal Canyon trail

I would rate couple of places along this trail “difficult” but fun because of that. The western side trip involved getting up a rock-strewn trail where you had to keep your momentum going so it was taken a bit faster than my normal pace. A spot on the main trail involved going up a pretty steep slope that had rocks embedded in it; experience loading the ATV into the truck (45 degree angle on the ramps) helped me get up the slope and over the rocks. In these places you just have to go into 4-wheel drive, low range, and trust your tires to pull you up and over the obstacles.

The main trail is not long, less than 9 mile each way, but with the side trips I put on 28.8 miles during the two- hour ride. This will not be one of my favored routes — it does not have the scenic and historical significance I prefer — but it is a nice outing for a half-day ride close to home.

I was surprised to see how much traffic this trail was getting this day. I met a pair of dirt bike riders, several horse riders, a couple of mountain bikers, and an entire family on bicycles heading up the trail along with 3 other utility vehicles and two 4×4 rigs at different points. Most of the high country trails are closed now either from snow or seasonal closures and Coal Canyon was still open, making it a destination. This is a lot more traffic than I usually see on most of the trails I ride.

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

Pam’s Penny’s Worth:

At least it got him out of the house.

Happy Trails.

The weekend of November 11 – 12 we took an overnight trip to eastern Colorado to look at potential retirement homes. Pam had seen a few candidates and printed out descriptions and maps to aid in locating them.

Some of the town names will be familiar to people who have kept up with this blog over the years; properties near or in Como, Cripple Creek, Lake George, Woodland Park, Florissant, Cascade, and Green Mountain Falls were all on the list. Lets get started.

I took quite a few photos this trip. Here are the houses we drove by and looked at; the most likely one is at the end of the list. It is located in Cripple Creek.

First stop, first day: Como.

Home for sale in Como

This place is overpriced; Como is not much of a town and the surrounding properties are quite run down. A big plus is it would be within a half hour of our lot at Sanderling Court. If the price drops we may revisit this one.

Lake George had this listing:

Lake George house

Located on a narrow lot with neighbors fairly close, the main trouble with this house was access and distance from amenities. Several miles of unimproved road (mix of dirt and gravel) lie between this house and the nearest paved road. We decided to pass.

Florissant had a few listings:

Mesa Drive, Florissant

Listed at a half-acre, the lot is very steep and mostly unusable. Not what we had in mind.

House on Beaver Creek Drive

This place was large but the commute, oh my. Off the side of a side road. Given we will need to work part-time in retirement and commute, this place would not be a prime purchase. We did like the lot and trees.

We arrived at our lodge in Woodland Park around 4:30 and decided to call it a day. With the sun setting at around 5:00 PM we planned to visit the rest of the properties the next day.

The new morning of the second day — after a breakfast of waffles and fruit — we headed out and began looking at more properties.

Woodland Park had this listing:

Potlatch Drive home

Again, no garage and no place to build one. Newer and with nice views, it was in an area with upscale homes around it. A bit of a drive from any services though.

We drove by a few other properties  in Cascade, Green Mountain Falls and Florissant (one had a lake view but already had an offer) that I did not photograph as they were not even in contention. Realtor descriptions can get quite imaginative and only a visit can serve to confirm potential as a retirement location. The houses were either on very steep lots or required extensive repairs and updates to bring them up to our standard. Disappointing.

The last town for us to visit in the two-day tour was Cripple Creek, where we made a few stops.

Prospect Avenue home in historic district

With lots of architectural features, this place is appealing to Pam in particular. Unfortunately it is right across the road from a large casino and very close to neighbors on either side. Another drawback is steps all over the place, and with Pam’s bursitis steps are a major drawback. The lot did have a one-car garage accessible from a rough “alley” (more like a cart track) and the current owners appear to be cat friendly.

Garage off alleyway

Cat on victorian house porch

The best house of the day was also the last. Located at 409 South First street, this brick home sits on a somewhat larger lot:

409 S. First (Tulley House)

Tulley house and yard

Smallish but on the edge of town and not in the historic district, this place features trees and a larger (for town) back yard and few neighbors. I have since spoken to the town about building a garage and other aspects of town living. An alley runs behind the lot and could provide access to a garage. An “antique storage building” (realtor comment) is present as well –picture a leaning shed with old barnboard.

Given the house’s smaller size and no storage building or garage, the challenge would be to fit all of our stuff, inside and out. Still, it is in town (Cripple Creek has a few services including a grocery and hardware store) and the bigger community of Woodland Park (big box stores such as Walmart and City Market) plus all services is about 30 – 45 minute away, similar to what we now have in De Beque.This could be a winner, but there would be hoops to go through to make it so.

On the leg home [after our last stop in Cripple Creek] we visited The Lot. Here we distributed some old bread products for the chipmunks and squirrels and let out dog Jo to stretch her legs. The weather both days was great with lots of sun and decent temperatures. There was very little snow on The Lot and the stop made for a nice break. Then it was off for the long ride home.

Trips like this help us define what it is that we are looking for in a retirement home. Our wish list includes at least one bed/bath on the main level, a lot big enough for the dogs and cats to run and still be safe, a garage or storage building (sadly lacking in most properties we’ve looked at) and access to services such as grocery shopping, medical and veterinarian services, and good access to job markets. And last, affordable on a retirement income. We have yet to find a place with all of these features but we will keep up the hunt.

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Trips like this help us define what we can afford in a retirement home. I’ve pretty much given up on a lake, pond, or stream view.  Homes with that feature are definitely out of our price range, both in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest.

While driving around the last house in Cripple Creek (South 1st Street) we did hail and talk to the near neighbor of the property.  She was so kind as to give me her e-mail address once we struck up a conversation (that included her cat rescue efforts in Cripple Creek).  I’ve e-mailed her several times with questions we didn’t think to ask at our initial drive-by. Nice.

Happy Trails.

PS:

Since I wrote this post the house has disappeared from the market listings, reason unknown. Bummer!

Big news in our part of the world…the new Grand Avenue Bridge opened for traffic last Tuesday.

Monday afternoon saw a “pedestrian walk” event scheduled as the grand opening; all area workers and residents were invited to walk across the bridge before it opened to auto traffic. Scheduled for 4:00 PM, I made plans to attend.

I don’t know how many people the organizers planned on but an estimated 3,000 people showed up for the walk. (I heard a couple hundred was the expected turnout.) Brief remarks were scheduled followed by a ribbon cutting; the walk was to begin at about 4:10 – 4:15.

I finally started walking at about 4:35, still don’t know what the hold-up was but it was getting dark and a cold wind was blowing. I saw several people heading back off the bridge rather than wait any longer but eventually all the walkers did get across.

Here are a few photos of the event plus the front page of the local newspaper.

Headline – Local Paper

People gathering on bridge before opening. (Charles Engelbert)

View of march from bridge level.

Having the bridge functioning, particularly during the morning and evening commuting hours, is a great relief for anyone who has to work in Glenwood Springs. Commuting times immediately returned to normal, eliminating the (often long) backups on the side roads that had served as detour routes. It helps make our commute much easier and quicker and we are very happy the contractors were able to open the bridge 10 days ahead of schedule. Generally good weather and a $25,000.00 per day contractor bonus for every day the bridge opened ahead of schedule undoubtedly helped!

Looking ahead, we are planning an overnight trip this weekend to the Woodland Park area of Colorado, not that far away from Colorado Springs. Pam has located a couple of interesting properties  in the area that we will drive by and look at. On the way home we will stop by The Lot and check it out. More on this trip, with photos, in my next post.

In a few unrelated events, here are a couple miscellaneous photos that don’t really belong to any large topic. The first is the back of our RAV4 after a shopping trip showing how convenient it is to have a small wagon, and the second is Laax, Switzerland, where daughter Felicity concluded a 5-week house sit.

RAV4 after a shopping trip

Laax, Switzerland (stock photo)

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Thanks for birthday greetings.  Another year – yippee.

Heard from Toby.  His first week working for the Tribe is going OK; there is an employee cafeteria to which he has access for a minimal fee, definitely a bonus. Full benefits and a retirement program makes us happy. He is [finally] “adulting.”

Felicity’s current house sit in England (she flew there after the Switzerland house sit) is near the ancient site of Sutton Hoo. Which is on her “to visit” list, but actually getting to Sutton Hoo using the local bus system will require a walk of a little over a mile from the last bus connection. Felicity contrasts British transportation connections to the Swiss transportation system – Switzerland wins.

Happy Trails.

It has been a quiet week and I’m at a loss for words to make into an interesting post. Here is a rundown on the routine and mundane that makes up a large part of our lives.

This weekend saw the second major leaf clean-up for the fall. Taking care of two lots, ours and our snow-bird neighbors, takes some effort and time. Some of the leaves went into flower beds as mulch, the rest taken to the drop-off point provided by the town. There is one last push to do for the season but the bulk of the leaves are off the trees so the last push should be just a tidy-up job.

In kid news, our son Toby is starting a new job with a Native American casino opening in his home town of South Bend. The job (shipping and receiving) is full time with benefits, benefits Toby has not had since he moved to Indiana. We hope this works out OK for him.

Felicity is currently in the United Kingdom and will be there for the next few weeks. When she does return to the States she has a couple more house-sits arranged in the Portland, OR area and will not be back into her Vancouver, WA digs until mid-January. Felicity reports it feels comfortable being in England again and the town where she house sits has at least three good pubs including one that serves very good food. Sounds like she is enjoying herself.

My mother has reduced her in-home care down to days rather than 24 hour care. This saves her a lot of money without a great loss of coverage; she does wear one of those “emergency call” buttons to summon help if something does happen that she cannot handle. Mom would like to stay in her own home as long as possible. We’ll have to see how long that might be but for now she is doing OK.

Closer to home, most people who read this blog know Pam and I commute a long distance to work. The commute has been complicated recently by a bridge replacement project in Glenwood Springs (which is where both jobs are located.) Good news: The replacement bridge is scheduled to open for limited traffic this coming Tuesday, 10 days ahead of schedule. The opening should help reduce the commute time, both into and out of town, by at least 20 – 30 minutes in each direction. We had changed our schedules to try to make the best of the situation but are getting pretty tired of the seemingly endless delays the construction project has caused.

Opening the bridge will not be the end of it; the associated interchanges, roundabouts, signage, and even putting the lines on the roadways is on-going and will take another year to complete fully. The bridge will be surfaced with a new type of polyester concrete that requires warmer temperatures to install so we can look forward to periodic bridge closures running into next spring or early summer. Still, opening of the new structure will help ease the constraints imposed by the project.

City of Aspen folks are looking at the early bridge opening with hope as ski traffic into the resorts will use the new bridge through Glenwood Springs for access. There’s a lot of money on the line for the resorts and businesses that depend on easy access. Without traffic flow up valley the area ski industry will suffer.

Here’s an artist representation of what the bridge and intersections should look like when completed:

New bridge across Colorado River in Glenwood Springs. (Colorado Dept. of Transportation.)

Life moves ahead but — absent our trips into the high country — the weeks get pretty routine. Hopefully next week will have a bit more news to report!

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

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

My mail order tulip bulbs arrived last week. All 100 were carefully placed in “The Mary Lynn Garden,” a corner spot in memory of my best friend who succumbed to cancer in August.  Extra soil blankets the bulbs, plus lots of leaf mulch. The corner should bloom spectacularly in the Spring.

Outside flower beds and yard look tidy but sad.  Everything tucked away for the winter, brown leaves mulched into flowerbed cover, bare trees – unsaid but anticipated is the “s” word (s-n-o-w).

Happy Trails.