Apple season begins😊

 

We. Are going to start juicing apples today for the "Great Apple Juice Give-away." Mike's favorite time of the year.

We picked on Tuesday morning. There was still snow on the ground, snow in the trees. We got SOAKED! We picked at Sam's house (Jonathan apples), at Dr. Saunders house (Granny Smith and very wormy), and at Jocelyn's house around the corner (Golden Delicious). I've never seen so many apples on one tree! We picked two trash cans full of those Golden Delicious apples and didn't even make a dent. We forgot to pick up the boxes at the Rasmussen's house, and those are Jonathan apples. Our apples Mike picked before we left on vacation sat in a warm garage the 11 days we were gone and many are bad, so we'll lose a lot of those.  But we should be in for some great juice over the next two weeks!

A sad note. We un- plugged the old deep freeze after having a repair guy determine it didn't need a freon recharge and we found it worked fine. We froze a few water bottles and it checked out just fine. I had no idea the coils would generate so much moisture/ condensation. They did ( the ones that are in the shelves) and I opened a freezer full of nothing but black mold. Ick. THAT took a lot of bleach and elbow grease to clean up that gross mess last night. Sheesh. Not the way I wanted to spend my evening. I was sad to not have a before and after photo. Ha. Now we know better than to close up a cold freezer, even if it is empty. Lesson learned.

[Update: Pam came this afternoon ( Wednesday) to help chop apples. Between the three of us, Mike, Pam, and I managed to press 19 Gallons of juice. That's a new record. Mike made some adaptions to his method. Success!]

Oct Deer Hunt Weekend Snow

 And this was on TOP of rain yesterday!!

I'm so glad I brought in the last of the roses yesterday 🌹.

Traveling Home, Sat. Oct 22nd, 2022

 We stayed the night Friday in a Super 8 in Cortez. The bed was comfy and the A/C didn't keep us up all night, so that was good. I actually watched TWO Star wars movies on TV while blogging during the commercials on Friday night.  I do not like commercials. But I got all my blogging done for the day. I enjoyed the included  breakfast there on Saturday morning, but Mike felt a bit icky, so we kind of took our time getting out of town. I found a Mesa Verde refrigerator magnet, but it took stops at four different places to do so. Yikes. The market across the street. Nope. The local Walmart. Nope, only generic Colorado stuff. The visitor and tourism place. Nope. So we went back to the Mesa Verde Visitor Center. It was a lovely place, only about five miles away....and that's not much in the grand scheme of things. And had Mike been feeling better, we might have stayed and seen exhibits. But I think Ranger Guided Tours like we did on Friday were better than exhibits. I mean-- we were THERE!

We also stopped so I could get out and read some information on the Cortez Flume. It was interesting.

 And then we drove home. Mike felt better as the day wore on. 

The scenery! What a contrast from our previous days on the road. Yes, some valleys had fall colors still, like the Montezuma Valley we left. But then we hit reservations and deserts of the West. And road construction. But it was okay. It's not like we were in a big hurry. We got home by 5:30 or 6 pm or so, in a light rain shower. We had eaten lunch at Subway  in Page, AZ. I drove for a bit while Mike snoozed. He drove from Kanab home and I could NOT  keep my eyes open!

It's so nice to be home again at long last. Whew! We were gone 11 days. All was well upon our return. We beat a storm that is supposed to come Sunday with freezing temperatures. I went out before it got dark and picked the rest of the garden veggies and the last three roses. 

Photos:

At the Mesa Verde Visitors Center.

Photos from the restored Cortez Flume.

It was part of a vast irrigation system in the valley from the Delores River. They used flumes like this one to cross arroyos (big ditches).

Blank, gray rocks and dead sage rush for miles. Then slickrock, sand, more (very interesting, geologically speaking) rocks. One was called Cathedral Rock.  There were lots of spires and pinnacles.

And then we drove to the Lone Rock area of Lake Powell. It is scarey low water levels. We could tell when we drove past the dam. 

There's no visible water around Lone Rock from the showers area.

You have to look hard and far away to find the water. Tragic. Truly sad and scary.

Part 2 Mesa Verde

 All of the drives through the park were long and winding , but the views from the top were amazing. Could not have picked a prettier time of year. 

I was surprised at how non- mesa- like they were. These were Not flat- topped places.  More like forested canyons and mountains. Well, they WERE forested before the forest fires de-forested them. But there is no flatness to them. Granted, they are not flowing with water, but there are seep springs in some of the areas.. and the residents built hundreds of coffer dams to help retain water for the dry farming they did. Anyway, lots of history.

After we enjoyed our picnic at Wetherill Mesa Ranger station, we hiked in , and hiked THROUGH the next site called Long House. About the same size as Cliff House, but we got an up close and personal view of rooms and even the seep spring. It was really cool.

Climbing ladders. 

Way way  up high are walled rooms, too.

Inside the alcove.

A seep spring

 Right at the back of the alcove. There was even some current standing water.

Grooves in the ground caused by grinding corn.

The walls up behind the far people are original.

 Two layers or floors. Tiny doors.

It was neat to be back up IN the alcove. 

Living quarters had T-Shaped doors. Living as opposed to storage areas.

A chimney opening on a kiva roof. Which is a floor.

The view down the canyon from the cliff dwelling at Long House.

A nice overview. Right,

And Left. Big, huh?

Don't forget to look up. There's stuff way up high, too. Very high. But roofs would have been higher when it was complete and populated. Still, tall ladders would have been needed.

Funny shapes in the floor of the "Plaza".

These are ladders we went up to get in.

Strangley, for Mid-October, wildflowers were still blooming on the Mesa top. 

We also saw a couple of wild horses, deer, and Chipmunks.

We stopped at a few overlooks on our drive out of the National Park. Unfortunately, the visitors center closed at 4 pm. We hadn't stopped on our way in .

Dinner for us was in Cortez, Colorado at Dairy Queen. Mmm ice cream ( for dessert). Hotel was the Super 8. Kind sized bed and comfy temperature. Last night's room in Durango was stuffy unless the air conditioner was running, and it was so loud it woke us up. All. Night. Long. 

Since we were so tired all day and since we arrived way early at both of our tours, we took naps in the very comfy truck. It might have looked silly, and Mike kept snoring and waking himself up, but it was what we needed to get us through our long day. 

Friday in Mesa Verde, part 1, Oct 21, 2022

 Cliff House at Mesa Verde was our first stop. Fascinating.

And even across the canyons, we could see sites . Everywhere. Hundreds in the Park. 

We loved every minute of it. It was hard hiking and climbing, but we did it.  Rests, water and ibuprofen. Love that drug.  

Here are some of the ladders we used to climb OUT of Cliff House area.

Kivas we're round houses. A chimney, deflector stone, plus fire pit, six pillars for the roof, which was flat. Niches with religious significance. We learned so much.

Rough , probably re-constructed  retaining walls.

Cliff House is the largest. They estimate 40 rooms, plus a layer of thirty on top, as most of these structures were multi storied. Such tiny rooms. Tiny doors and passages. Dark. Smokey from cooking and heating fires.

The "nice" archeologists of the 1920's tried putting things back the way they thought they should be. It helps. It would have been hard to tell what was there from a pile of stones. Surface structure might have been so, but some of these cliff dwellings have original walls! There was much more there, but it is amazing what these people did. Just amazing.

One ranger was a native American from an Arizona reservation. Pima, related to Pueblo and Hopi. Her people!

A lot of stuff was hauled, shaped, assembled to make these. We walked up to the area, across the front, and then up and out the other side. 

Our next stop was at a reservoir! Up on top where the people farmed. This was a self- guided walk. Very nice and quiet.

There is seepage, and a way to collect rain water and snowmelt. Layers of mud and rock on concentric circles.

And stone steps leading down in!

There have been MANY  forest fires throughout all these mesas. Above is a burned area. Below is the area with NO burns. Quite a contrast. It must have totally changed the ecosystem. Some were recorded from 1930's, and from more recent decades and years.

Their signage was SO hard to read! Who would use such a font?!

First we did Cliff House, then looked at the Mesa top dwellings. Then we drove down to Long Mesa and ate our leftovers from last night for a good picnic lunch. At a picnic table. In the sunshine. So pleasant. 68 degrees F. Sunny. Slight breeze. Couldn't have been any better.