In any event, onward!
We arrived in Estes Park with our moving truck last Friday. In the last week we've been living here, it's been a period of adjustment. Adjusting to a house that was built in the 20s and therefore was electrified before the advent of 3-prong electrical plugs. Adjusting to the fact that it's just going to be cold in the house most nights. And yeah, adjusting to the fact that this is our front yard:
The other thing we've had to adjust to is the wind. My goodness does it get windy up here. Of course, we were lucky enough to get here just in time for some pretty severe winds (we had gusts of 100mph on Saturday) that are not always the norm. That storm did some pretty good damage to other parts of Estes, including knocking down some pretty big trees, but it seems that we are far enough down the valley that we didn't get the worst of it. It does seem to be pretty breezy almost all the time though, which is something that I'm still getting used to. The house we live in is a wood frame, and old, and it creaks a lot. It's an adjustment.
All in all we are almost all settled in. We discovered a crawl space under the house and were able to throw a couple of plastic bins with duct tape under there to save some room. We finally got cable installed yesterday, and although finding an internet provider was a bit of a challenge at first, we have our service arriving on Friday. It was a little challenging to be so cut off from the world for a couple of days. This is the first time I've gotten my computer online in almost a week. Almost everything is put away now, excepting the second bedroom which is being used as my office when we don't have visitors. The problem we're running across with that room is that the electric rung heater doesn't seem to work, so it's very cold in there unless the sun is shining right into the windows. The other problem is that we threw out two bookshelves that were in bad condition, and because I have a lot of books, most of them are still boxed and on the floor. So there's not a lot of navigation room in there as of yet. In fact, by and large, it still looks just like this:
But we were surprised to find upon moving all of our furniture into the place last week that we have more room than we were anticipating. We were also pleased to find that the closets have a ton of storage space above them (because we have a vaulted ceiling) so that helped a lot.
It's a cozy little place, and I like it quite a lot. Best of all, my green children love it.
We haven't seen too much wildlife lately, although I suspect that because it's been so exceptionally windy, the animals are all bedding down to keep warm. I saw a positively enormous coyote at the end of my driveway this morning, although I wasn't able to get a picture. (I'm discovering that it's probably best if I carry my camera with me everywhere!) He was a good-looking guy, although he was favoring his left paw. According to one of the baristas at Starbucks, he's a local and has been injured for quite a while. We did get an up-close encounter with this handsome fellow on our way up the valley a couple of days ago:
We know that there are deer nearby, because we've found scat within 25 yards of the back door. Just haven't seen any of the culprits yet! As for our animals, they're settling in nicely. Brody, the dog, was a little skittish for the first couple of days, I think because the sound of the wind was making him nervous. We've been trying to get him used to being out on his chain so that he can spend some time outside (we don't have a fence and I worry about him running for it if he spots an animal), but so far all he's done if we walk away and leave him is cry. Another adjustment. The last couple of days he's been fine though.
Whiskey, the cat, has been nonplussed from day one. He was in control since the moment he walked into the house, as you can see.
Estes Park has been very welcoming to us so far. The community here is beautiful and the people are wonderful. I've never felt so immediately welcomed. I think we are going to fit in very, very well here.
Until next time.
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