Life in the mountains...of South Fork, Colorado

One of the things I do, and I'm missing, is going for my walks.  Back home, I usually walk the Bicentennial Trail everyday or if the weather is not cooperating I use my treadmill.  Unfortunately, I have no treadmill and walking, well...the hills are alive!

When I first arrived my daughters tried to make sure I was able to do some walking so we drove to Alamosa, Colorado and I walked at the nearby park.  Alamosa is 47 miles away from South Fork where I'm at.  Unless we had a trip to buy groceries at the local Walmart, walks in the park were nil.  So the next suggestion was actually walking in the hills surrounding our home.  (There are hills but they look like mountains to me!)  I have to say walking on snow is different.  The crunch, crunch of my footsteps, avoiding ice, struggling to breath and catch my breath while going up a hill, and the constant thirst, is a lot to get used to.

So we tried walking at home.  The first time I attempted to walk on the roads, I made it up the closest hill but the breathing was more than I could deal with.  We are 8300 feet above sea level.  Air is thin so it takes your body a while to get used to it.  Mind you, my room is on the bottom floor.  I have to climb stairs everyday to join everyone.  I'm thinking the stair climbing is helping but I still get out of breath.

Luckily, Adri, my daughter got an exercise bike for Christmas so I managed to do 35 minutes and still felt pretty good.  So I decided to join both my daughters on their morning walk.  So this is what happened.

At first I felt pretty good...then the first incline and boy was I out of breath...but I persevered.

Once I made it over the hill...there was another hill.  I made it, but decided I had gone far enough.  I told my daughters to go ahead but I was returning back home...I assured them I would be fine.  They walk three miles, about an hour and a half walk.   So I took pictures on my way back...

The first photo is where I'm coming down the hills again.  The second are the mountains in front of me.  (I just turned around and took a selfie so you could see the mountains.



These are the mountains in front of me as I'm walking home.  They are so majestic!  My phone just doesn't capture the majesty of the mountains, nor the peacefulness, the sparkling whiteness of the snow...I am in awe!

The house seems so far away.  Mountains to the West.

Mountains on the left side of the road.

I'm getting closer as the road curves downhill.

The town is just below the white strip beneath the mountains.

Our neighbors east of us.

Just past our neighbors on the right..

 And I'm walking...

and walking...

And I arrive at the driveway to our home..

This is where we live! 

Can you see the deer footprints in the snow?  Sometimes there's a tiny herd of about
 seven to eight deer that come into the "yard". The window on the right is my
bedroom.  There's about three feet of snow outside my window.

See the icicles?  They can get as long as three feet.  They look like long
cylinders filled with liquid silver.  When the sun shines, they sparkle so beautifully.  But
don't stand under the edge of the house...snow melts and when it melts enough, huge blocks of
snow slide off the roof.  There's a constant crash going on outside.  Took a little getting used to.

We lived in Aurora, Colorado back in 1980-1983.  Diana, my oldest, was born in Englewood, Colorado at the Swedish Medical Hospital.  It was the first snow of the season on the day Diana was born.  For years I could tell Colorado was in her blood.  She traveled and lived in lots of states...but Colorado was definitely in her heart.  She invited Adri and Joe to visit and the rest is history.  We have two families living in Colorado now.  Ralph and I are so proud of our daughters.  It was on our bucket list to go back to Colorado one day.  So here I am, minus my darling, living the dream we had hoped for.  I try to capture as much of the beauty and share it with him everyday.  We made it, sweetheart!