“It’s easy to make a buck. It’s a lot harder to make a difference.” – Tom Brokaw
Cabin News
The latest and greatest news from our cabin in Sand Creek Park.
Thursday, December 22, 2005
Christmas at the Cabin, Day 1, Part 2
Dave Mikelson came over in the early afternoon to check on us and see what time eggnog is to be served tomorrow (6:00 p.m.). Shortly after that we took off to cut a tree. This is always an experience. We want a great looking tree. But, if it looks too great then we are guilty about cutting it! We found the perfect choice. A very nice tree, but a bad top. I’ll post a photo tomorrow. (Trees are always much bigger once you get them home.)
Anyway, I hauled it home by tying rope to it and then looping the rope around my chest and walking. Here is a photo:
We have it nicely decorated with a modest amount of lights (have to watch out for electricity consumption, you know), some really cool ornaments and some garland that Lynne knitted.
Chile for dinner. Very good with some cornmeal muffins and red wine.
All afternoon we’ve been listening to Christmas music on our Sirius satellite radio (channel 2). If you don’t have one of these for your car and house yet, you really need one! (Hey, that is a great Christmas idea!)
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/22/2005 at 07:18 PM
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Christmas at the Cabin, Day 1
It is about 1:15 p.m. and we are settled in at the cabin. Sam knocked the phone off the night stand (his version of a wake-up call) this morning about 6:30. So, we got up and started the day. We loaded the coolers, the pod on the truck, 3 cats and seven dogs in the Suburban. By 9:15 we were packed and pulling out of the driveway.
We stopped at MacDonalds for a breakfast sandwich, as is our custom when leaving early for the cabin. I had a sausage biscuit with egg and cheese, Lynne had an egg mcmuffin. We had to stop for gas, too. So, Lynne went in King Soopers for Starbucks Latte’s while I gassed up. We get a 10 cent discount there. We were on our way out of town by 9:45.
The drive was a bit stressful. First, there was a lot of wind and crosswinds in Wyoming are not fun! And, Sailor gets really scared in the truck for some reason. We put up a barrier so he can’t jump over the seat and get on the floor next to Lynne, but he busted through that. He sits and shakes and his eyes are huge and scared. We don’t know what happened to make him so scared of riding in the back of the truck.
We came in by Sportsman Lake Road. It is in pretty good shape. There is some mud in places where the snow is melting.
We arrive in Sand Creek Park about 11:15 and stopped in at the Martin’s to check in. Larry had openned our road for us this morning. We traded some small Christmas gifts and then come on in to the cabin. Larry had done a great job and it was an easy trip in.
I was amazed to see that the batteries were fully charged. Last weekend, less than a week ago, they were down by about 500 amp-hours—almost empty! And, it has not been very sunny. But, the wind is blowing and, I guess, has been for a couple of days. So, I was afraid we’d arrive to find an electricity deficit and we are actually in good shape—even after running the heater for a long while to warm up the cabin.
Lynne started a fire in the wood stove. Then we unloaded the truck and unpacked everything. We then took the dogs for a short walk to the “bottom” down by Bart’s Creek. The snow is pretty deep so we made Millenia stay behind. After our walk we put out bird food and the chickadees and nuthatches are already busy!
The wind is really blowing! Probably 40 to 50 mph out in the open. But, it is warm, about 39°, and partly cloudy.
We’ve settled on chile for dinner.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/22/2005 at 01:16 PM
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Christmas at the Cabin, Day -1
We plan to spend about 10 days at the cabin this Christmas season. We will leave tomorrow, Thursday, and come back on New Year’s Day. I thought I’d leave a short post here each day or two to update you on our time at the cabin.
Over the past couple of days, we’ve been preparing for the stay. We made a “provisioning” trip up there last weekend, delivering wrapped presents, nonperishable foods, clothing, etc. Since there are quite a few snow drifts and the driveway is under about 2 feet of snow, we had to get the plastic toboggans out of the shed and haul the stuff in that way. Also, it had been cloudy and still and very, very cold. So, the heater in the cabin, set to 55°, had been running a lot and the batteries were almost depleted. That is worrisome since we will be moving in on empty batteries instead of full! Let’s hope for some warmer temperatures, a sunny day, and a good breeze today!
We worked on a meal plan, figuring out what we would eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the entire stay. Then, we make a long list of needed ingredients and finally consolidated that to get a shopping list. Today, we will go shopping and buy all the perishable foods which we will haul up to the cabin in a large cooler in the back of the truck (with the 3 cats and 7 dogs). I’ll put the Yakima pod on top of the Suburban and we’ll load it up with other items like clothing, last minute gifts, etc.
We hired Larry Martin to use his John Deere tractor to open up the roads and our driveway. He’ll probably do that today, so we should have smooth sailing all the way to the cabin door tomorrow.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/21/2005 at 08:03 AM
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Sunday, October 23, 2005
Internet and TV at the Cabin
Since we have a pretty good chance of living out one of our dreams soon—a dream of living full-time at the cabin—we’ve started taking small steps toward making the cabin our full-time home instead of a weekend retreat.
We’ve started the design of a garage that we can use to house our vehicles, but also to provide extra storage and a place to put a refrigerator, clothes dryer, etc. But, that will need to wait until next Spring before we do excavation or construction.
However, we decided to go ahead and install satellite Internet and TV. I worked with a great small company based in Loveland called Satellite Solutions to order a DirecWay Satellite Internet system. While they were up here to install it, I also had them put in a DirecTV dish. We have DirecTV at home in Fort Collins, so we can just bring a receiver up here when we come up for the weekend and get TV at no additional charge.
Both work great. In fact, I’m posting this article from the cabin on Sunday afternoon (it is half-time in the football game).
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 10/23/2005 at 02:46 PM
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Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Novice Mycophagist #3 “The Oyster Tree”
Last year, while walking our southern property at Sand Creek Park, I found a dead, fallen Aspen tree that had a few oyster mushrooms growing on it. It was mid-August, I think, and the mushrooms were well beyond their prime. So, I made a mental note to check the tree, which I dubbed “Oyster Tree” (I have a habit of naming things on the land—there is Picnic Rock, Bart’s Creek, Dick the Tree, and so forth), the next year.
We spent four days at the cabin in late July and on the second day we hiked to Oyster Tree.
Posted under: Cabin News • Mushroom Articles • by Rick on 08/02/2005 at 05:44 PM
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