Early snow October 25-26

We interrupt our regularly scheduled "Beth's cabin vacation posts" to bring an update on our early snows and tree damage! The evening of October 25, rain and then snow began falling--just as the weather people had predicted.
By Wednesday morning, there were 10.25 inches on our deck rail, and snow continued lightly throughout the morning. You can see from this picture how the trees still had leaves and they are bent over by the heavy snow. None of these trees are on our property.

We were very glad that Emily had removed the trampoline mat from its in-ground setting the day before, and that the pavilion was also taken down from the deck just in time!

When I took Jason to work at 8:00, we saw that there had been much devastation to our town's trees. There were branches down in almost every yard and even in the streets. Part of the town was without electricity. ACE Hardware, where Jason works, had to be open with no electricity until 11 a.m. They had a generator to run one cash register and used flashlights to take customers to what they needed to buy. They sold a lot of snow shovels that day!
At lunchtime, we were feeling grateful that our tree had not broken. While Emily watched out the window, our Linden tree in front gave way and broke 4 different large branches. Thankfully, nothing was under it to be damaged, like happened for other people in town.

The snow was very wet and heavy.

That afternoon, Jason and Emily built snow walls and had a snowball fight.


On Friday morning, we had Lincoln here to be babysat, so the kids took him to a sledding hill near his house to play in the snow.



This is what our tree looked like on Saturday morning, when Rowen and Emily started cutting out the broken parts. Nearly all the leaves fell off because of the snow.

Looking at the tree from the street view.

Rowen cutting out the broken parts.

There was still snow on the truck he had to clean off so he could haul the branches away. Because it was so warm just days before, the ground was warm enough to melt the snow quickly.

Rowen surveying the mess.

One of the two truck loads of branches ready to take downtown to the branch dump.

Rowen and Emily cut up the larger branches for future firewood.

The pile of firewood from the tree.

How the surgery looked this week after we got another 9 inch snow exactly a week later than the first one!

Mountain cabin vacation 2011 Day 2

These are pictures from Thursday of our cabin vacation. If for no one else we post them here on our personal "online scrapbook" for our family. Written from Beth's perspective.

Since the temperature was 28 when we got done with breakfast, Emily, Daddy, Mother, and Jason played Rummikub while we waited for it to warm up. Daddy was very brave playing games with us, even if he doesn't enjoy it for himself.

Then we all went out to enjoy the beautiful day.

Aspens left of the cabin.

View right of the cabin, looking off the deck.


Hat on (made by a friend, Judy S.) and stick in hand, ready to go on a hike around the property.

We found this tunnel,

and researching it later Daddy believes it was a marmot restroom. They dig a tunnel then fill it little by little from the middle out. Here is the other end of the tunnel a few feet away.

A wonderful picture of my wonderful daddy!

Mother and the "still in the nest" kids!

This is the spot on the cabin property that has [our kind of] cell phone coverage. We "hiked" there a few times to make calls, especially because Grandpa (Janet's dad) had surgery Thursday.



After lunch, Daddy and I decided to drive west [from Lake George] on US Hwy 24 and see what we could see. At first the scenery was woods: pines, aspens, and prairie grass. Then we reached Wilkerson Pass Summit (elevation 9,507), which overlooked a surprising backdrop: a desert valley, with fourteen-ers rising here and there, in appearance like little mounds of dirt surrounded by desolation. You get the idea. (We discovered that all this area we were traveling in, west of Colorado Springs is called "South Park".)
View west: left and down from where we were. The mountain peaks in the distance were a few of many 14,000 feet above sea level.

And just right of that:

View east: Pike's Peak

We drove on down into the valley, through the here-unpictured desert, on and on, through Hartsel, Colo, and then drove right past the entrance to Antero Reservoir. Oops. I didn't know that was our "destination", but thought if I could convince Dad to, we could stop and see water! That's the exact place he was looking for anyway, because our friend Steve (hereafter mentioned) loves to fish there, and we wanted to know what kind of infamous place it was. We finally found the entrance, and made our way in there (a mile or so).

The reservoir itself was beautiful.

With mountain backdrop, and beachy forefront.


Beautiful.

We had to chuckle at this hilarious sign. Click on it to make it big enough to read.

Sometimes things look better in the rear-view mirror ;)
We just had to drive around Hartsel, when we were on our way back to Lake George. Besides touring one of the little stores (looking for some thing we needed), we drove around on the few short, dirt roads in town. Here I am by the school.. the next building over is the library: open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if I remember correctly.

Arriving back from our 100 mile round-trip excursion we found that Mother, Jason, and Emily had been Kindle-ing,

Computer-ing, read-ing, write-ing, work-ing on the puzzle,

and hike-ing.


Not to worry, I had been having fun crochet-ing while Daddy was drive-ing, and we did get to go explore-ing in South Park!
Thursday evening we had our friends Steve Cunningham and Tonya Sickler up for supper, games, and visiting. Here's Steve playing "Whoonu?"

Tonya when we were playing "Things". The pencil-ed ear means she was guessed-out already.

Several of us playing "Worst Case Scenerio".
I crocheted during part of it.

And Mother worked on the puzzle

which I had done the borders on, then handed over to her.

This is how much of the puzzle was done when we left on Friday (mostly done by Mother).