Summertime

According to NOAA we were supposed to have a high of 58F degrees today.  It's 6 p.m. and it's still 70F degrees on the thermometer installed outside the north cabin window.  It was sunny and hot.  I've got the top panel of the door open--that pesky door that caused so much trouble all winter and on which I had taped shut the panels covering the screens--to keep the wind and snow out.

The other windows have screens that are still in storage and need to be installed, but even my neighbors who have lived here for years are skeptical this is the end of winter.  We all keep remembering it snowed regularly throughout April and May last year and we had our last significant snowfall on Memorial Day.  I downloaded the photo below on June 9 last year!

Today, I decided to start moving the woodpile.  Even though I'm the one setting the task, this always makes me feel as if I were in military boot camp and just being given make work.  Move that wood from there to here..then move it from there to here...

I didn't keep track of the number of trips I made, but the cord against the privacy fence is starting to take shape...

Dixie was certain each time I made a trip toward the woodpile that we were going to get in the car and go someplace...

...so finally I put her in the car and we went to the post office...still no check from Sears...and dropped off a couple of books I'd finished at the library.  It was such a pretty day and I knew she wasn't ready to go back to the cabin yet and neither was I, so we drove over to Rollinsville, the next mountain town south of Nederland.  There was a pull-out where I was able to park and get a pretty good shot of the Eldora Mountain Resort ski runs.  I don't know when they're scheduled to close.  Because they are in the Roosevelt National Forest they must close on a specific date even if they have ample snow.  It must have been really frustrating last year when we had wonderful snow and lots of it so late. 

I knew that a couple of years ago there had been what was really just a junk shop in Rollinsville.  I'd been there once and it was so bad I'd never been back.  It now has a new owner, Tim Underwood, who has really cleaned it up and it is now The Wild West Mercantile Co.  He takes things on consignment, thank you, thank you, and only takes 35%!  I'm heading down to my storage unit in Boulder next week and dragging some of the stuff out of there and taking it to new friend Tim.  This may be the answer to my prayers since I have been unable to open my own store.

While I was in Rollinsville, I took some photos of this wondrous pie-shaped abandoned building that I would love to have a shop in.
I wonder if its odd shape would be bad feng shui?  When I return with my consignment items I'll have to ask Tim about its history.

Train tracks go right through Rollinsville heading west toward the Moffat Tunnel.  I remember my folks taking us to the tunnel to watch the train enter the tunnel when I was a child so decided I'd drive over there.  It's about a 10-mile drive and the road eventually gets pretty rough.  This is what Wikipedia has to say about the tunnel:

The Moffat Tunnel is a railroad and water tunnel that cuts through the Continental Divide in north-central Colorado. Named after Colorado railroad pioneer David Moffat, the tunnel's first railroad traffic passed through in February 1928.

Fifty miles (80 km) west of Denver, Colorado is the East Portal in the Front Range, about 10 miles (16 km) west of the town of Rollinsville, Colorado at 39°54′08″N 105°38′46″WCoordinates: 39°54′08″N 105°38′46″W. The West Portal is near the Winter Park Resort ski area at 39°53′15″N 105°45′41″W. The railroad tunnel is 24 feet (7.3 m) high, 18 feet (5.5 m) wide, and 6.2 miles (10.0 km) long. The apex of the tunnel is at 9,239 feet (2,816 m) above sea level. The Moffat Tunnel finally provided Denver with a western link through the continental divide, as both Cheyenne, Wyoming to the north and Pueblo, Colorado to the south already enjoyed rail access to the West Coast. It follows the right-of-way laid out by Moffat in 1902 while he was seeking a better and shorter route from Denver to Salt Lake City. The water tunnel and the railroad tunnel parallel each other; the water tunnel delivers a portion of Denver's water supply.

This is what it's going under or through:

I got all the way to the tunnel, got out to take a photo and my camera battery had died!  So here's a photo off the internet:

Photo by Ian Stehbens for Google Earth on Panoramio.

I remember when I was a child we got close enough to the tunnel entrance that we could feel the wind from the train, but they have obviously improved security and this is as close as a person can get now.

Since I did this on the spur of the moment, I had no idea what the train schedule was and, in fact, did not see one....I can sometimes hear the whistle from the cabin deck on a quiet evening...so next time I'll try to time my visit with the train and be sure my camera battery is fully charged.

Did you have a traveling companion that led you to take an interesting drive today?  Teddee