a minor snag

The pics are there for you to click some make you smile some make you sick I of course don't know the trick to show the smiles without the sick.

Fall colors in the Colorado mountains. This is why all the leaf peepers from Denver drive up these bumper-to-bumper highways and deal with all of the crowds just to get a look at the dying leaves.

In the Fall It's just about as hard to find a parking place in the mountains as it is in downtown Denver. I guess that's why the Denver folks don't mind coming up here..... There used to it.

I woke up feeling some wind this morning at the Walmart parking lot in Salida, Colorado. Checking the weather forecast for the area, I found out it was very windy and will continue all day. Despite that, I didn't want to take advantage of Walmart's hospitality and stay for another night, so I got out on the road and drove for two or three miles, turned around, and went back to the Walmart where I was safe from the wind. So It appears I will stay until tomorrow morning if Walmart doesn't kick me out.

I have found the Walmart parking lots a handy place to stay when you end up in a weather situation such as snow or wind that precludes further travel. You probably won't be able to go deep into the national forest to find a place to boondock if the weathers bad. And without reservations, many campgrounds won't take you in, so Walmart's are very generous in their overnight stay rules and realize that when the winds blow 40 miles an hour, many RVs can't safely travel. And since Walmart's are frequently found next to major roads, they not only get a lot of RVs that pull in to get out of the weather, they also get a lot of semi trucks facing the same problems.

So it looks like my mini-vacation has hit a brief snag, which hopefully I'll be able to drive out of tomorrow. Yesterday worked out so perfectly, with the leaves seemingly at their peak color and having such a good time at the narrow gauge train open house in Como, a minor delay in my mini-vacation will hardly be noticed.

Theboondork

Narrow gauge train, volunteer railroad worker on the turntable. Linda mentioned in her comment that the turntable must be difficult to push around, but actually, because of It's precision balancing it's quite easy. I would describe it like this; Almost any adult can get it started moving, and once it's moving a 10-year-old can keep it going.

Narrow gauge boxcar. apparently this old rolling stock, in various states of disrepair, just hangs around out In the yard, until someone has the time and the money to rebuild them.

Fall colors in the Colorado mountains. This is what the Denver folks spend hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic to see.

This old pot-bellied stove has warmed the behind of many a railroad man...and even the front if they turn around while there standing next to it.

imagine It's wintertime in Como. Your about 10,000 feet In altitude, there's 4 feet of snow on the ground, it's 30° below zero and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour. And the only thing between you and a frosty grave is this old potbellied stove....at least thanks to you being a railroad worker, you have access to plenty of coal to put in it.