Last full day in the cabin. We will be eternally grateful to our friends for letting us stay here. No, more than that, offering the cabin to us when they heard we were planning a Colorado trip. They have managed to find a slice of heaven up here at the top of this nation. I will not go into details as I wish to respect their privacy but there are some awesome stories about this land dating back to the gold rush.
Our last day here dawned ominous. The radar showed heavy rain above the Sawatch range. Of course, radar coverage is pretty terrible here in the Rockies, one reason the Department of Energy is deploying its atmospheric observatory to Crested Butte (I’m an investigator on that!). Anyhoo, I digress. Radar and satellite showed current rainfall moving away from us, but new storms were popping up and we decided to scrub our walking plans and really enjoy the cabin and our friend’s property to the fullest. First task was to clean up our wood pile. We had all been enjoying scavenging fallen dry timber from the 5 acres we had been staying on. While a lot of the wood rots and you should leave this alone a lot of it is suspended on rocks and other trees and is just fuel for a fire, be it intentional or unintentional.
Fun around the cabin.
So, clearing clean fallen timber is a good thing. Of course, with 5 acres we barely made a dent! Today was also prime hummingbird watching day. Over the course of our stay, we had learnt more about our tiny, bejeweled friends and they had become more accustomed to us. I wanted to document the different species and, unlike earlier in the week knew they would let me get real close. So I affixed my very well used (20 odd years old) Nikon 105 macro lens to my not so well used Nikon Z7-II camera. The mechanical lenses do not autofocus with the new range of mirrorless Nikon bodies so it was full manual! The Macro lens allows a very close focus which is essential for these cicada sized birds.. Suffice to say I am super happy with the results. Louise got a batch of work from back in Chicago, so I continued to re-stock the cabin with firewood when I noticed a drone overhead. I followed it back prepared to ask the flyers, politely, not to fly over private land. Turns out they were hired by a local utility using LIDAR to look at what corridors needed clearing of fire hazards. Naturally I say, “carry on” and offered help. Louise’s work done the rest of the day was consumed with cleaning and making the cabin cozy for the next, very lucky occupants (and a little more real estate speculation!) Tomorrow. Off to Loveland!
OpenSky 