The Arctic Fox and I survived the snow storm and are none the worse for wear. I had some concerns about my water pipes in the basement since it actually got down to about 20° last night but I set my furnace for 60°, which for some strange reason is as low as my thermostat wants to go, and it kept everything warm enough so that nothing broke.

All in all it was an educational experience and now I have a better idea about what the Arctic Fox is capable of dealing with, even though hopefully it will never have to deal with it again.

By late morning almost all of the snow had melted off and large parts of the campsites were very muddy. Not enough to get stuck in but still pretty gooey and slippery. I managed to "slither" the truck out of my boondocking site without using four-wheel-drive but I doubt if I could pull the Arctic Fox out at the moment without four-wheel-drive. But I'm sure when I get ready to leave Tuesday it will be just fine

I went to Walmart and picked up a few things and seeing as how it's Sunday I drove down to the old part of town and took a few pictures.

I went to the area of town where the train station is and found that section of town kind of sad. At one time in the past it looked like it had been a very busy and prosperous area with fine hotels and large businesses within a block or two of the train station. And I could see in my minds eye a steam train pulling into the station with dapper gentlemen in their derby hats getting off the train accompanied by ladies in the latest fashion, getting into a carriage that would take them down the block to a first-class hotel.

But it's certainly not like that anymore. When trains stopped being the way that people traveled, the train stations and the areas around them started to deteriorate. What few people continued to ride trains were of more meager means and weren't interested in staying at high class hotels and eating in fancy restaurants. And as things got worse for the trains they were forced to carry more and more cargo and less and less people, which meant that the areas where trains stopped attracted ne'er-do-wells  hobos, and bums. And Were not prosperous areas for merchants anymore.

So all that's left are the buildings they left behind, most of which are falling apart or in various states of disrepair. A few buildings have taken on new life as a welding shop or an auto repair place but their glory days are obviously over. And unlike the nicer parts of town where the old buildings have a chance of a new life, the old buildings "down by the tracks" are built on ground where no one wants to be, and have no hope of survival no matter how beautiful they once were, or how many stories they could tell.

                   theboondork

Well it went and did it, it snowed on me last night and just to make sure I noticed it continued to snow all day today. On first glance it seems like a bad thing, after all what could be good about below freezing temperatures, several inches of snow, and 25 mile an hour winds. But after thinking about it a while I found a little bit of good in this whole miserable freezing cold snowstorm.

I think the benefit that I got out of this is it reinforced my decision to move out of the Colorado mountains and try to stay away from places that are like this for several months of the year. I can take a little bit of it, but not much.

Since I've been living in fairly warm and pretty comfortable places for the last year and a half I think I had forgotten what it was like to wake up cold and pretty much stay that way for the entire day. It had also slipped my mind about what it was like to run a heater all day instead of just half an hour in the morning. I had also gotten used to not having to put on a coat and thermal underwear just to get something out of the truck. and speaking of trucks it's nice to be reminded every once in a while how great it is not having to scrape a half inch of ice off the truck windshield every morning.

It also showed me how amazing my solar panels are. The sky was completely clouded over, as you can see from the pictures. It snowed for the entire day and yet my solar panels put out 40 Amps today. Now that didn't totally charge me up mostly because I've been running the furnace off and on to put some heat into the basement so my pipes don't freeze, but I was amazed that I got any charging at all. Every flat surface that I can see is covered with snow, so I assumed my solar panels were covered with snow and yet somehow they were still charging my batteries. I don't know how, and I guess I'll never find out because I'm not about to climb up on the roof with the wind blowing as hard as it is.

These and many more things have reminded me what it was like living with ice, snow and freezing temperatures for long periods of time and has reinforced my decision that I could never live like that again.

         the frozen boondork

It was a cloudy, chilly, rainy day today. Tomorrow is supposed to be worse, with below freezing temperatures and a couple of inches of snow. If that happens I believe that will be the first time I've been snowed on since I left Colorado. I can't wait for global warming to kick in so I don't have to worry about snow anymore.

Needless to say I haven't done much of anything for the last two days. I'm still carrying a couple gallons of water to the Arctic Fox everyday from the one working water spigot  in my area and that's pretty much the high point of my day.

I'm hoping that Monday they will turn the water on and get Storrie Lake State Park on to the summer schedule. That way I can fill up my water tank and shortly thereafter hit the road again for Colorado.

  theboondork