Jan 14, 2023: tracks, waiting for snow.

Here are a few photos of recent tracks around our place. I’ve written before about my fascination with tracking. It was a stunning day yesterday, so I took a 3 hour hike around the canyon, checking out who else is hanging out.

Today, we took a walk at Valle Seco, a Forest Service area north of us and saw more tracks.

Alan and I have done a lot of driving recently; a week on the Front Range with family, trips to Durango and Pagosa, Las Vegas, NM, Albuquerque, and more. Big Red (below) is now in the shop, getting repaired following the hit-and-run a couple months ago that trashed the back quarter and rear bumper. It’ll be there for at least 2 weeks. So we are down to 1 vehicle, Alan’s work truck. The first big storm of the season is moving in tonight, and we hope to see at least a couple feet of white stuff from it. The plan is to lay low and get out the xc skis and snowshoes.

Just to add some variety, here’s some shots from our drive home from Fort Morgan, CO.

We haven’t done much work on the house recently. Too much driving, I guess. I’ve been busy prepping for the coming semester, which starts Monday. I’ll be teaching 4 classes online. Alan’s been working on adding lighting in the kitchen, which is wonderful. We continue to work with the water system: there’s 1000 gallons of rainwater in the cistern, and it’s not freezing much even when it’s minus 10 outside, so that’s great. Every 10 days or so I drop a pump into it and fill up the 65 gallon tank upstairs, which then gravity-feeds to the kitchen and bathroom sinks. The well provides water for doing laundry, but we still need to install the 3 large (120#) filters that will allow us to use it for washing and gardening. That’s a big job, and not one Alan really wants to tackle in cold weather.

The woodstove works fantastically and keeps the place cozy, and so we have been enjoying comfy evenings reading and watching TV shows like The Expanse and Wednesday. We don’t watch much television most of the year, but make up for it during these long nights!