JOB

Miscellaneous job pix:
A short campsite tour video:

EVERCHANGING

It is a constant wonder to us that the weather is able to change at a moments passing of time. Here is a view from our office this morning.

RARE

Because it sits conveniently located for visitors, near the observation deck by the waterfall, the Forest Service chose the design and construction materials carefully. They wanted it to provide convenience for visitors, yet be somewhat inconspicious, blending in with the surroundings. They succeded, as you can see in these photos.


As it turns out, the location struck the fancy of a Golden Feret, an rare and endangered species.

The Feret is a female and has been raising her young in the attic of the facility. When the snow is deep the Feret has been chewing on various tasty parts of the outhouse.

A new and "critter proof" out house has been constructed. And the feret has been left in possesion of the older toilet.

Thanks to the USFS for caring enough to take the extra steps for it's critters !

EYECANDY

Eye candy for rail fans:

RAILFANS

Fellow Oliver travel trailer owners, the Keifers from Florida, came by to visit us at Trujillo Meadows. They had spent the previous night at the Great Sand Dunes national Monument. It turns out that we are both railfans, so we had some campfire chat's about that. They were scheduled to ride the Cumbres and Toltec steam train from Chama New mexico at 10 the next morning so, we were at the Cumbres Pass station to see their train come into the station. Here is a video as they pass back through Cumbres Pass heading for Chama, Nm.:

CATHEADS @ 10k ELEVATION

We are camphosting at Trujillo Meadows Colorado, above ten thousand feet of elevation in the Rocky Mountains. When cooking at high elevation, it doesn't take one long to figure out that things loose their temperature very quickly. So, Butcherknife Betty's delima was, how to keep the golden brown biscuits hot until everyone could get to the table. Here is how she went about it this Father's Day. a. Set the baking pan full of cathead biscuits, fresh out of the oven, into a pre heated cast iron skillet and then cover. The cast iron skillet will give off it's heat slowly keeping the biscuits warm over an extended period of time. However, if you don't like your biscuits with a golden brown and slightly crunchy bottom, you will need a spacer between the baking pan's bottom and the skillet. We have used a horseshoe as a spacer in the past. Setting that hot skillet on the tablecloth can cause a problem if it isn't isolated from the cloth with a spacer such as below. Here is a short biscuit video.

REMODELING

Mountainborn & Butcherknife's Rocky Mountain Office Remodeling project video:

GREEN

Betty's Mom:

http://www.legacy.com/funerals/davis-smith-glenwood/obituary.aspx?n=Green-Eula-Mae&pid=128597995

MILD

Another mild and beautiful day unfolds at Trujillo Meadows Colorado. Most nights are quite cool, but we don't run any heat until the morning when we get up. The sunlight always rapidly warms things up until we are down to shirt sleeves as we make our rounds through the campground.

DRIFT

Trujillo meadows is located in the South edge of the wilderness area. The USFS leases grazing rights and the campground has a drift fence to keep the cattle from being in the camping areas. If the fence is not let down each Winter the many feet of snow will destroy the fence. Each Spring the fence must be lifted back up into place. Occasionaly timber will fall on the fence in places, requireing a bit of chainsaw work. We are getting in a few extra hours and a head start on the season. We are about two weeks early this year, but hardy souls are already camping with us. There is about three miles of drift fence around the campground and we are almost half way done with getting it back up in place. Some of the fence is still buried under feet of snow, so it will be awhile before we can finish it up. Here is a look at a part of the fence.

ReName ?

Could changing your "HANDLE" from butcherknife to pocketknife be considered as a downgrade ? In the pix below, Betty does pocketknife surgery to my big toe. Just before "digging in", she grinned and said, " take two pictures and call me in the morning ".
If you are one of those rugged individualist that want to see all of the details, click on the photo for the large, detailed photo.

CHAINSAW

No self respectin' Ouachita Mountain Boy wants to be caught without his chainsaw. And true to form, we brought ours to the Rocky Mountains with us. We've had it for quite some time now. It's a Johnsered Professional model, 21" roller bar, compression release and all. Most of our kin folks prefer a Stihl saw. We like Stihl ok, but got a deal on this one. Any how, the point is, give a Redneck a chainsaw and a bit of time and there is no tellin' what you will wind up with.
The Cajun Birdman and I walked away from camp, saw in hand, found a tree big enough to catch our intrest, and the chips began to fly ! Soon we were examining the burl of the slabs of wood we had cut, and were talking about how pretty they were.
We decided that they were just too nice to bust up into fire wood right away. So, they became temporary tables !
Betty enjoys the extra table space around the campfire. Tables today, firewood tomorrow !

COORDINATES

37*02.124N 106*27.168W
The coordinates of this wonderful 1XEVDO hotspot. 18.5 miles from Chama, New Mexico, in a high mountain meadow at about 10,500 feet of elevation. Located close to the Trujillo Meadows Campground in the Rio Grande National Forest of Colorado.

UMBRELLA

Leave it to them clever Cajuns to come up with such a simple yet effective solution to shedding snow off of the generator.

SNOWING

What a wonderful supprise this morning !

COMMUTING

Just another day's commute to the office ?( EDIT: In the video, I must have been more excited about the road conditions than I thought, I quoted the date as 10 April 09, when it should have been 10 June 09 )
We heard the sleet start to hit our Oliver this morning about 0500 hours. Then it got quiet. We thought it had stopped falling, but, it had turned to snow. We awoke to about a half inch of snow. It has been snowing all morning and at the time of this writing we have almost an inch of accumilation. The Cajun Bird Man, Aubrey Landry, arrived in his Oliver yesterday afternoon and parked next to us. After supper, around the camp fire, he commented that the only thing this alpine setting needs, is a light dusting of snow to be complete ! Geeze ! Thanks Aubrey ! I walked out to the sattellite dish and cleared the snow so we could watch the weather channel. It's gona' be up near a hundred degrees at Vandervoort today.
The forecast for here tomorrow is a high up around 65*, so we better enjoy this light fluffy snow while we can !
Oh, yeh, there is a thing that I have noticed. The weather men avoid giving forcasts for elevations above 10,000 feet of elevation. I think it is because it is so hard to get right.

SPRUCEHOLE

Very high up in the Rio Grande National forest there is a sign at the end of the road saying no vehicles past this point, Elk Breeding area. Here is a look.
While I was recording the end of the road video there were several Elk out in the meadow nervously watching us. I tried to video them in this next clip.
This next video clip was taken a short distance away above the timberline.

GUESTS

Betty and I had over guests for lunch, a brown Trout and two Rainbow trout.

EXCALIBUR ?

They wuddn't no Knight in shining armour whut done planted this here weapon in stone to await the coming of the new leader ! I think Bubba has done been here !

FLAGS

When we dug into our large plastic tub of office supplies, that was labeled TRUJILLO MEADOWS, we noted that the flags had somehow been left out of the package. A drive to the mountaintop and a call to the Area Manager caused them to be hand delivered to us. Makes the campground look better ? Yeh, we think so !

PEACEFUL

A tranquil Rocky Mountain campsite.

Here's a campfire video:

SHOVELIN'

Though the snow is melting daily, Betty just couldn't wait to use her picnic table and fire ring. This morning she started a snow removal project.

As the snow melts we are able to explore further and further into the Mountain logging roads. Here is a photo of a roadside throphy that was revealed by recent snow melt. You can tell by looking that it spent the winter under feet of snow.

OFFICE

Here is a quick video look at our office with a view, if you look carefully, you can count six mountain ranges off in the distance. We are on Neff mountain in the Rio Grande National Forest, at just under eleven thousand feet of elevation. At night you can see the glow from the lights of Chama, over in New Mexico.
We drive up to our "office" a couple of times a day to check email, return phone calls and pay bills, ect, ect.. The ofice is about one mile from our campsite. We see Mule Deer, Elk and Big Horn Sheep daily.

WATERFALL

BEAR

Betty reads the bear warning sign.

Betty shows that she is prepared with the one pound cannister of bear repellant spray.

Betty shows her "stand and fight bear repelling stance, spraying the cannister straight ahead into the bear's face.

Larry shows his preferred bear repelling stance, spray over shoulder behind him as he flees the area !

COMMUTE

A short video, before the memory card maxed out, showing a part of the daily commute to the "Office", where we have great internet speeds and a fantastic view. The turn off to get to the office is 10,582 feet high. The view is magnificent from the small high mountain meadow.

MEADOWS !

Loaded as heavy as we ever have been, because we are carrying all of our supplies that we need to get the campground ready to open, we left Aspen Glade campground and started the steep climb up La Manga Pass. We had recieved the go ahead from our area manager and were moving up to Truijillo Meadows campground ! About one fourth of the way up there was a loud clap of thunder and a heavy slushy sleet fell hard enough that the wipers had to be on high to contend with it. I got so bad that we pulled over and quickly went to four wheel drive high range for the rest of the climb. The rest of the day was much the same. Snow one minute and sunshine the next. The lightning and thunder was a bit disconcerting. Here is a short video look at our campsite.