We Made it

up to Platoro, CO and back down. It was slooooowwww, bumpy going, but it was a beautiful trip. After I got the message from Debra in NC, I found it on the map (we have a trucker's map too) and saw the little, tiny gray road (indicates a dirt road) that we would be going up. Now, when we go to visit my parents, we have to go up a dirt road there, as well. The difference in the two is that the roads in Fremont and Custer counties are at least maintained. There is a sign at the very beginning of the road we went up that the US Forest service has a contract with the local county for the county to maintain the road at least ONCE a year. It didn't look or feel like it had been maintained since it was opened in the Spring. It was all bumps and washboards and huge mud puddles. That's okay, the scenery completely made up for the road conditions.

There was a bit of snow left in the really high country, but not much. As you can see from the picture above, that's all that was left that we saw on the trip up there. One of the dumb things that I forgot to do was to take some pictures of the little community that we delivered to. It was at 10,000 feet and was only open for about 4 months of the year. They don't keep the road up there open all year, so when the snow flies, the road closes. There were a couple of lodges, a bunch of cabins and a gold mine. That was the extent of the town. They did have a decent restaurant, so we got breakfast and started back down the mountain.














If you have never been to Colorado before, you wouldn't know that it is a free range state. What that means is that if you own cows, they can range anywhere they want, within reason. For instance, they aren't allowed in downtown Denver, but when you get out of town and are in the country, they can just about go anywhere. If you don't want cows in your yard, you have to fence them out...that's your responsibility, not the cow owner's to keep them out of your yard. Any way, this is just one of the groups that we met up with on our trip to Platoro...
It was kind of funny...the little ones were afraid of the truck, but the big ones just looked at us and wandered out in front of the truck like we weren't even there. Silly things











Aswe were coming down the mountain, we looked over to our right and this is what we saw. There were two cowboys that were working a herd of cattle and moving them down the valley. We watched them and their three dogs work a small herd of cattle that had broken off from the main herd that was here...







It was kind of cool to watch the 5 of them working together to get the cows down the valley. It was also amazing to watch the dog work. I think that they were working harder than the cowboys were.

We went further down the road and stopped at a view spot. While DH rearranged the items on the deck of the trailer, I went out in the woods and took some artsy fartsy flower and nature pictures. We got a new camera a few months ago and I really haven't taken the time to use it and find out what it could do, so I decided to try it out a little bit in the woods. Here are some of those pictures.
This was a cool fallen log that I found when I was walking the trail. I thought that the log itself was cool, but the composition with the aspen tree with the carving in it just made it even neater.




















I don't have any idea what either of these flowers are, I just was playing with the focus on the camera and getting the flowers in focus while everything else was blurry behind it and liked these two. I especially like the one to the right. The colors are so saturated and I love that purply blue color alot.




Here's a picture of the truck taken through the aspen trees that were on the trail of this little view point. I just thought it was kind of a neat shot of our truck "out in the wilds".









Finally, here is a shot of ds and the dog. One of his favorite things is harassing the dog. He loves to walk her and play with her and she spends most of her time in the back of the truck with him, either laying right next to him, or when he is doing school, she will lay under the bed at his feet. I would say that they are pretty much buds, but she is still DH's dog. DH is her MOST favorite person.








We got down off of the mountain and ended up sitting in Walsenburg, CO for a couple of days. It was semi productive in that I got things like laundry done, but I also got a raging case of food poisoning. I spent a miserable 24 hours and was convinced that I would have to die to get better. If you are ever going up or down I-25 and see the Acorn Travel plaza....don't stop and eat at the A&W. It is bad news.

Since then, I have been spending more time knitting and less time on the computer, hence the lack of posts to the blog. I am just about finished with my Victorian Lace Socks for the Six Socks knitalong. I might actually be done with these before the dead line of the end of the month. Since joining the KAL, I have done two other of the patterns, or at least attempted them, and I didn't finish either of them on time. One I still haven't finished, and in fact, I had the socks for ds, loosely based on the Horcrux socks, done nearly to the heel turn, and ripped them completely out because they just were too wide.

I am still working on the tank for my sister, but I don't think that I am liking the pattern that I am using with the yarn that I am using, and I think that I am going to change to a tank from the summer edition of Interweave Knits. It is a plain tank, but both of the straps are lacy and I think that I like that one better and it will fit the yarn better.

I will take some pictures of the WIP's and post them the next time that I make a blog post. Until that time, enjoy your week.