Wednesday began under chill overcast but brightened lower down for the drive across windswept steppes

to La Veta and a last visit with Jytte…foot etc. much improved.

On the way home it was beginning to look snowish and later still

dinner for [and by! Amazing Barbecue under semi-extreme duress,

wonderful vegetables] the kids down here one last time, they being pretty much packed and hoping for early departure after a last round of sort-of-martinis.

That night the temps dropped and light snow fell but they made it out around nine and reached blue skies by the Springs, heading for DIA, which wasn’t so sunny.

We remained in single digits and constant tiny snow all day, reading about frozen cowboys in the Sakatchewan winter of ’06 *,

waiting on the couldn’t-be-worse-timed delivery of our new woodstove and

keeping an eye on worsening weather as the day waned with no word from the truck

until nearly four, from Westcliffe.  The driver’d never been down to Gardner, let alone up here [and certainly wouldn’t make it now] so we gathered up two neighbors

and through driving snow drove

to Gardner to wait.  Just at dark the truck limped in, engine problems, the driver leaving us out in the zero degree temps as he called for rescue on his cell.  We finally got his attention long enough to tip the five hundred pound package into the back of L’s Tacoma

and after hacking the ice away so he could close his rollup door left him there, the town closed down and rescue unresolved

but if all else failed the snowplow was due back from its run to the County Line in an hour or so.

[above, Highway 69 ten minutes after the snowplow passed]

Into the hills in whiteout conditions [not shown], fortunately preceded by someone recently enough that there were tracks most of the way, and home where Linda, though still semi-frozen, made everyone shrimp pasta before they trekked over to Leon’s for a sauna during a lull in the storm.

By bedtime we’d heard that Christine and Izel were safely in Brooklyn and Luz was bedded down in Salina, Kansas, first leg of the drive east.

Next morning it was clear [cold] and bright

so we waited until things warmed up to twenty before going out

to see what was in our 500 pound damaged package, then reconnoitered….

 

In the afternoon a number of neighbors helped wrestle the stove into the house

and set it up, to our [and Lefty’s] considerable delight

which probably means that, while California floods,

our weather will turn warm and benign.

Which it did, the roads slushy with melt, but not before a trip to El Depot and

the P.O. to find Nina’s excellent drawing safely arrived.

By two o’clock, however, things were pretty slippy for getting up to the gate to collect a couple of visitors although

the warming trend did create some interesting potential for disaster on the porch…

Yep.

The Melt continues as the West Coast gets drenched…but we are far from it,

 

sloshing about.  A last Libre weekend of closing, packing, loading; nothing to see here, except that as antidote to That Which Happened in November we recommend Everyone Get a Puppy**

…as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, the melt continued and

we intend to be on our way south Tuesday morning.

Next; maybe some mud…but Roadtrip!

M

*”Genesis”, in Wallace Stegner’s “Wolf Willow”, perfect accompaniment to a zero degree day of steady snow.

**Kiku, Mary Ann’s puppy, pictured.