Our Casa

We are getting our little tin can 'winterized' due to some unseasonably cold weather. That is not a bad thing however, now we will be more prepared for January. Sure we live in a campground, but, the location is pretty amazing. Here are a couple of pics from the homestead.

This is Mt. Shavano, sitting at 14,229, it is the 17th. highest peak in Colorado. This is our view out the front door. Out the front window we can see Monarch Ski area. We were on the southern edge of the big storm that made it's way across the country in the last couple of days. Monarch Ski area recieved about 15" of snow, they are pretty sure that opening day will be November 26th. I drove up to the top of Monarch Pass, it was a winter wonderland. Trucks were required to have chains, and they actually closed the pass for a few hours to deal with 3 semi-trucks that went off the road.

For a couple of inside pictures, we have a small borrowed woodstove (Thanks Pete & Jeff) that keeps us warmer than the outside air. We collect sticks when we go hiking, a couple handfulls keeps the chill off for an evening.

We spend a lot of time in the Kitchen. It felt incomplete until we put up this great hook system that friends at the North House Folk School got for us before we left Grand Marais. Super Cool!

With the howling winds coming off the pass, they've been 30-50mph up there, we were loosing way too much heat from the floor, so we put up some roofing material around the bottom. Although it is a nice night tonight, we feel like it made a big difference. Temperatures last night were right around zero, but it was 52 degrees in town this afternoon. As soon as the sun hits the tin can in the morning, I think it warms up about 5 degrees in the trailer. This view is to the East from our Casa. This view is looking out over the Arkansas river, this gives us great sunrises. It is about 10 miles to Salida down the valley.

We need your help! We can't keep refering to our little shelter as the 'tin can'. We're asking you to submit names. This is like a contest without any real tangible prize, just the satisfation of helping us sleep better at night.

Road Trip

In search of snow, we departed Grand Marais on November 1st. headed towards the rockies. Our goal was to drive about 400 miles a day, during daylight. For those of you who know us, that might sound pretty wimpy - we're used to driving all the way at once. The reason for our lazy pace, was that we were pulling our new home behind us, a 1948 tin can trailer.

The end of the first day brought us to Canby, Minnesota. We met up with our friend Matt, who just moved there this summer from the North Shore. He gave us a tour of town, including the campus where he is going to school to become a wind turbine technician. Sounds like a great program with tons of potential work opportunities in the future. After a super filling dinner at the local grub joint, we spent the first night in our camper on the street infront of Matt's house.

We knew Sunday was going to be long, we were shooting for Custer State Park, somewhere around 500 miles from Canby. We got an early start and the winds of the Great Plains were slightly out of the east, pushing us down the road. Things were going well until we hit a bit of road construction and the trailer decided to 'jump' off the ball. That slowed us down quickly. Because we were in this road construction site, the truck behind us had no choice but to stop and help us out. We put the trailer back on and made our way the next 1/2 mile to the closest gas station. I found some string in the rover and tied the tongue onto the ball. That made Mica fairly nervous, but it was Sunday and there were no hardware/auto parts stores open. We hit the capital city of Pierre and to our suprise, found a farm store that had tons of hardware. We fixed the trailer and made our way westward. We hit the Game Lodge campground in Custer State park right at Sunset, 10 good hours of travel.

Monday was going to be a shorter day, so we spent the morning touring the wildlife loop and hiking through the prairie. We saw bighorn sheep, pronghorn, bison, mule deer and Mica's favorite- the prairie dog. We proceded south and made great time, ending our day in Sterling, Colorado. We stopped at a travel center there and tried to get some advice on Camping in the area. Well, the best option the gentelmen in the travel center could give me was to camp at Walmart, "that's what most people do". So my distaste for the worlds largest distributor of cheap plastic crap has now pushed campgrounds out of small towns as well. We compromised and spent the night at the travel center.

Tuesday would have about 300 miles in front of us to reach our destination of Salida, Colorado. It was a really windy day and the rover got a workout on the long grades. After about 4 hours we were in Colorado Springs, stopping very quickly for gas and then on our way into the mountains. We passed through Canyon City and quickly found ourselves winding up the Arkansas River. After stopping for lunch we continued up to Salida, rolling into the Heart of the Rockies campground at 2:30 in the afternoon. We settled in and went to town for dinner. We should have a good night sleep, there is supposed to be snow for the next couple of days!