Author: Elaine

Irony

So yesterday I went with a friend to Woodland Park.  She wanted to check out a consignment sporting goods store there.  The store was a bust, but it gave us a chance to get out of Colorado Springs, and to eat at one of our favorite restaurants.  Afterwards, we headed out the road to Deckers for a few miles just to look at the late winter scenery.

We took one of the side dirt roads that branch off CO 67 and go up into the Pike National Forest.  There are lots of them.  We drove to the end and stopped so I could take a few photos.  As we drove back towards 67, I yelled stop because I saw elk off in the woods.  I got out of the car and took a few more photos though the trees kept the photos from being very good.  My friend was surprised that I saw them, but as I explained, due to the number of mule deer in our valley, wildlife spotting while on the road is a survival skill.

I hadn’t seen elk in a couple of years.  They used to occasionally come into our valley from the Air Force Academy, but I rarely drive along the road at twilight these days, when one is most likely to spot them.  (Although our valley is bordered by the Pike National Forest, the sheer grades along the border tend to discourage most wildlife from coming down.) Although spotting mule deer is a daily occurrence, I always get excited when I see elk.

I got home about 6:30.  It wasn’t twilight, but it was overcast enough that I watched for elk as I drove up our valley.  I couldn’t believe it when I actually saw some.  I pulled off the road and took this snapshot.  I count ten in this photo but believe I saw at least fourteen.

Braided Onion Bread

For some time now, Jack has been making bread using the bread machine for the first step, then finishing the loaf by hand.  This is the first time he has made a braided loaf.  Halfway through the process he was predicting disaster.  Each strand of the braid is filled with an onion mixture.  As you can see, his pessimism was unfounded.  This recipe came from Bread Machine Bounty, a bread machine cookbook that we’ve had for many years.

Hazmat Spill near Monument Colorado

I don’t know how many of my readers know that I live near Monument Colorado.  This morning my mother woke me with a telephone call to tell me there was an evacuation near Monument due to a leak of hydrochloric acid.  A train car is leaking and there is a chance of a vapor cloud.  I had to look up the cross streets in Google maps to find the evacuation area.  I think we are a comfortable distance away but am monitoring the situation via local television.  Since I don’t normally watch local television, I am once again amazed at the the commercial to content ratio.

I hope they get the area cleaned up quickly so that 250 families that have been evacuated can return.  Trains along that track usually carry coal down from the north, or the empties from the south, but we’ll occasionally see other types of freight.  The tracks, to judge from the railroad crossing we use every day, are well maintained.  The twitter hash tag is #monumentacidleak.