POTR #62 Front Row Seats

PEACE ON THE ROAD

Front Row Seats

September 2, 2010

There are certain things in life that are taken to be be the very best that is available. In automobiles it is either the Rolls Royce or the Cadillac. In a business environment it is the office with a large window. In apartments the Pent House is on the top floor because it the best. In many other things it can be said that it is the crème de la crème. In the theater the very best seats to view the show are located on The Front Row. We have those seats here in the United Campground in Durango, Colorado. First of all we are parked with the front of the motor home headed east to catch the first rays of morning sun. Just out in front of us about sixty feet is the tracks of the Durango Silverton Narrow Gauge Rail Road. Twice in the morning and twice in the evening we have a short but spectacular show as the steam train heads toward Silverton or completes its run back to Durango. A couple hundred foot to the right of us is a road crossing so the engineer starts blowing his whistle shortly before the train reaches the camp ground. Since there is a slight grade through the campground there is plenty of steam and smoke to enhance the show. There is a one man putt-putt that comes 15 or 20 minutes ahead of the steamer and one that also follows behind. Once in a while there are work trains that come through as a bonus.

THE DSNGRR ENGINE #482 ARRIVING IN ROCKWOOD STATION

There has been a story circulating on the Internet that the gauge of the American Standard Gauge Rail Road dates back to the chariots of the Roman Empire. While there may have been some slight stretch of the facts but basically the story is accurate. Grooves were cut into stones to guide wagons across dangerous areas long before the roman empire came into existence. The grooves were cut between 4' 6” and 4' 9” in most instances. Sixty percent of the world's rail roads use the “Standard Gauge” of 4' 8.5”. Other sizes are used in many locations. In the Colorado mountains there were several reasons to use a gauge of 3'. First and foremost was consideration of cost. With the smaller gauge all the rolling stock was smaller. This included engines, tenders, box cars, flatbeds, gondolas, and passenger cars. The smaller equipment was cheaper to build. The tracks that needed to be laid was smaller, lighter and cheaper as were the ties. Because the trackage and equipment was smaller the cuts required through any hill or through a canyon could be narrower. Any trestles and bridges that needed to be built could be lighter and therefore cheaper. Another advantage was a shorter turning radius allowing negotiation in tight areas. The grade that a narrow gauge could negotiate was steeper by a couple degrees than a standard gauge. That shorter turning radius and couple of degrees climbing ability allowed the narrow gauge to go into areas not available to standard gauge trains. There were disadvantages too. The narrow gauge made them more unstable thus requiring lower speeds. In the mountains that may have been a minimal disadvantage because any train would have to go slow. The smaller engines and rolling stock necessitated smaller loads which was overcome by simply running more trains.

THE DSNGRR EXCURSION TRAIN FROM DURANGO ENTERING OUR CAMPGROUND

When a train comes through there is a lot of steam and smoke. There is the chuff, chuff, chuff of the drivers, the rattle and clatter of the steam valves. The engineer is ringing the brass bell and the whistle is blowing before every road crossing and perhaps they still blow the whistle near the homes of former engineers like they did forty years ago. Every one of the wheels clickety clacks across the rail joints and any irregularity of the tracks. The ground shakes like a small earthquake as the train goes by. In just a minutes time silence returns, the smoke dissipates and the last car of the car of the train is around the bend or has gotten so small in the distance that a person is unsure if it was just there. For all the noise and all the clatter is is amazing how quiet the train can be. It may be possible to hear the whistle from a mile away echoing down the canyon as the train approaches a road crossing. Yet if there is no crossing and the wind is right and blows the smoke away the train can approach within a hundred yards before it is detected. At that distance the whistle can be very startling when it is the first sign that the train has arrived. The putt-putts that precede the steam train and the diesel engines are even quieter. There were a couple evenings that we went up the canyon to photograph the train, then move down the route and photograph it again and repeat, then photograph it a final time at our camp or even close to the station. It was really a lot of fun. Now I have lots of pictures and video to edit.

As near as I can determine the last time I was in Aztec Ruins, New Mexico was in 1967. It has been long enough that I am unsure what has changed and what has not. Back when cameras took film and it was expensive to develop I did not take as many pictures as I do with the digital so it is difficult to compare with today. Somehow the ruins themselves seem to have changed little except for some minor excavations and some filling to protect certain areas. But it really seems to me that the visitors center has been improved a great deal. It is an amazing place to visit and contemplate how life might have been for the Native American inhabitants of the 1100's and 1200's. There is much speculation as to the real purpose of the pueblo that was built here. It might have been a planned cultural center, a religious center, or perhaps simply a village that built in a good location to live with access to water, crop lands and trading routes which became an important center for the surrounding area. The first explorers that saw the ruins thought that the Aztec from far down in Mexico must have built the pueblos. It was some time later it was determined that the the Anasazi, translated as “the ancient ones” or by some “the ancient enemy” were the actual builders of the ruins around 800 to 1000 years ago. There were several occupations and abandonments over 2 to 3 hundred years. Inhabitants came from Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon to build the 450 room up to three stories high and the numerous kivas.

DWELLINGS, KIVAS, STORAGE ROOMS OF THE ANASAZI AT AZTEC RUINS, NM

No visit to the this area would be complete unless at least a small amount of time was spent at Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is about fifty miles to the northwest as a crow might fly or an Anasazi might walk from Aztec ruins. The American natives that lived at Mesa Verde built pit houses on the top of high mesas for several hundred years and then moved down into the cliffs to build their homes. There is a lot of speculation about why they made the transition, better living conditions, safety, or some other reason. The water supply was often 700 to 900 below in the canyon bottom and the trek for all water had to be made frequently. Some of the cliff dwellings were only a few rooms and others contained over a hundred rooms plus many kivas. The people seem to have left the mesa because of a drought that lasted over sixty years. They moved further south into Arizona nearer the rivers where a more dependable supply of water was available. There are over 4,400 archiological sites in the park with 600 some cliff dwellings. There was a fire some years ago and due to the removal of vegetation there were several sites discovered. As I drove along the roads I could not help but wonder, “How many more sites are still to be found just a few yards from where people pass every day?”

CLIFF PALACE RUINS IS THE LARGEST CLIFF DWELLING IN NORTH AMERICA

As I drive from state to state and town to town I am struck with the beauty of this country and the diversity of things to see. I only scratch the surface of a small area in each place that I stop. I drive the Interstates and main highways from point to point and then get into the Jeep and then look for a few diversions near where the motorhome is parked. Even at that I think I am seeing more than the average person will see. So from here we will slowly go south towards our winter home in Texas and look for more places to increase our amazement of this great country that we call home.

Till later this is Doug of

Peace On The Road

POTR #61 5280 Foot High

PEACE ON THE ROAD

5280 Foot High

July 27, 2010

I would have a hard time trying to figure out how many times that I have made a trip between Denver, Colorado and to some point 75 or more miles beyond Topeka, Kansas. If it was suggested that I have done it 75 or more times I would not argue. It is likely less than a hundred but it is possible that it is more. I knew that the farm we lived on in Kansas was around a thousand foot, give or take some, and of course I had heard that Denver was “The Mile High City”. In one of the steps to the west entrance there is a brass cap which reads: Elevation: 5280 feet, One Mile High, 5-12-69. I had also heard people state that Denver was actually in a low spot. The elevation increasing in all four directions. To the west a few miles the mountains start and of course it is obviously higher there. But to the east it is less obvious, so I took other peoples statements as true. This last time coming across eastern Colorado I had an altimeter. A hundred miles east of Denver about three miles past Arriba, CO we reached an altitude of a mile above sea level. When a discovery like that is made a person has to wonder just how many other towns could also advertise themselves as the Mile High City. It really did takes some of the “zing” out of the slogan. But the capitol building with a 24 carat gold dome and its interior of Colorado Rose Onyx is an impressive building to be setting “A MILE HIGH.”

THE COLORADO STATE CAPITOL BUILDING WITH ITS GOLD DOME

Coming across the middle of Kansas along I-70 has been described as boring by many people. Personally I have found it many things except boring. It is a long way with a lot of the same things to see. There are lots of wheat fields, lots of cattle pastures and a lot of miles of Interstate highway. I can understand that the Interstate system was built to move a lot of traffic and it bypasses the many unique sites along the way in favor of speed. A little over half way across Kansas is Post Rock Country. Back in the late 1800's just after the Civil War when Kansas was being settled it was almost treeless. There was also no restriction on where cattle could and would roam. Today it is the responsibility of a cattle owner to keep the cattle out of another mans property. Then it was the total responsibility of the farmer to keep the cattle out of his fields. There were few options that farmer had to protect his crops. Fences were made of whatever they could to enclose small plots of land. The first settlers had to be concerned with a place to live. So they built dugouts, soddies and some people built homes out of the local limestone rock, which was from the Greenhorn Limestone formation. This was a formation that was very consistently 8 to 12 inches thick and covered by a layer of earth less than 3 foot thick. There were some thicker and thinner layers of limestone and coverings of greater depths but they were not the best for the quarries. The earth was removed from the outcropping. Drills made from modified woodworking tools were used to drill a series of holes into the rock. Splitting devices called feathers and wedges were driven into the holes to split off pieces of rock up to twelve feet in length. Downward pressure was applied to the drills by leaning on them with the chest. Some of the quarry men claimed that they developed calluses on their chest. The drilling was all done by hand until a blacksmith “Nelse” Sankey adapted a Maytag washing machine motor to power the drills. The freshly exposed rock was somewhat soft but hardened after exposure to the air. The stone post weighed between 250 to 450 pounds so even the setting of the posts was a lot of work. A wagon could only carry between four to eight of the posts at a time, but at least they would last 50 years or more while wood only lasted 6 to 10 years. Some that are in use today are approaching 130 to 150 years. During the early years of the post quarrying the posts sold for 25 cents each delivered to the farm. When the price of the post reached $1.00 to $2.00 in the 1920's most farmers decided that the cost was too high with other materials like steel posts being made available by train, and a single wagon could carry the 360 posts necessary to enclose a quarter section. But before that happened there were over forty thousand miles of stone post fences installed. During the same time barbed wire was developed to attach to the posts making it effective for animal control. The farmers also discovered that Osage Orange trees would make a barrier to animals and hundreds of miles of hedge rows were planted. When crossing Kansas today there are many trees that were planted by the pioneers for the purpose of animal control.

REPRODUCTION OF A POST ROCK QUARRY WITH SOME TOOLS OF THE TRADE

Colorado has a couple record setting roads near Denver. Mt. Evans Highway is the highest paved road in North America. The key word is paved. There are higher roads but they are not paved. The road stops short of the top of 14,264 foot by only about 40 foot of elevation. There seems to be some confusion as to how high the road actually goes. I have found several figures. The other road is called Trail Ridge Road and it is the highest continuous paved road in North America. During the years that we lived in Colorado we drove over it at least a hundred times and possibly two hundred times. In the spring there were snow cuts that were between fifteen and twenty foot high. Years ago people were encouraged to feed the chipmunks and ground squirrels. That was a lot of fun to do. Now it is highly discouraged or even against the law. The scenery is unsurpassed any where that I know. Some places come real close but do not surpass. We almost always have seen elk and deer plus other smaller animals. There have been times that we have seen over an estimated 600 elk in one meadow. Many elk also seem to spend their time above timberline in the high meadows. We have seen a gathering nearly a hundred over 11,000 foot high. There is also one section of road where about every day the Bighorn Sheep cross the road to feed in the meadow during the night. That section of road is often crowded with people. In recent years parking has been restricted to limited areas and foot traffic is not allowed so that the sheep are not restricted in their movement. It is always fun to travel this road over the continental divide and stop at the place where rain falling in one place goes to the Pacific Ocean and rain falling a few feet (or inches) away flows to the Atlantic Ocean. It may not quite be the top of the world but it sure is high up there. All a person has to do is trot a short distance and discover that the scenery is breathtaking. Having wintered in Texas we have found that we can tell that the high altitude affects us in ways that are different from when we lived a mile high all year.

SEVENTEEN ELK IN A MEADOW ALONG TRAIL RIDGE ROAD

We have been in the Denver for longer than we had intended. We had put off some repairs to the motor home until we could have the work done where we had purchased it. And we were lucky, I think, while we have been here to have had a problem with a couple sensors on the engine of the Jeep rather than being elsewhere.. It seems that we have spent a lot of time in the repair shops for one thing or another. Have you ever noticed that a simple little job on a vehicle takes all the spare time in a day. There is another reason that we have been in Denver longer than planned and that could be called personal vanity I suppose. Kim a lady that we consider a friend has encouraged me to share the story with you.

When I worked for Newmont, the largest gold mining company in the world there was several years that they sold “Gold Splatters” to the employees. Gold produced in the Nevada mines was melted and some of it was poured into water from about a three foot height. When the molten gold hit the water it exploded and instantly solidified into fantastically shaped pieces, some very small and some possibly as large as an ounce. I bought some of these splatters and had them made into jewelry and gave them as gifts. I should have bought a lot of splatters, but hindsight is a lot better than foresight. After we had been retired several years we were in The Big Fisherman, a favorite restaurant in Rockport, Texas,. Erma had ordered fried oysters. She is eating one and “crunch”, “I think I bit into a pearl!” She had found a natural pearl in her food. We did not know if it was of any monetary value or not. It was valuable to her for esthetic reasons. We went to the jeweler that had made our other gifts and asked him if it would be worthwhile to make some jewelery out of it. He instantly said that it would look great in a ring, perhaps as the centerpiece of a rose. He said he could have it done in a week. We extended our stay a week. I took him some splatter gold from another project to be used in the ring. That really reduced the price. In a week we picked up a beautiful rose ring with a pearl center. I was able to place the ring on Erma's finger just like I did with another ring nearly 47 years ago.

Isn't that a good place for the story to end? If you say “Yes!” you are likely right. But there is another part that I can add. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 years ago my parents gave me a gold initial ring for my birthday. At least I think it was a birthday gift. I am sure it was not expensive but to me is was the greatest gift that I had ever gotten. I wore it everywhere and all the time. As I grew older and my hands got bigger I had to move it to other fingers, but I still wore it all the time. One day I was out in a field near the farm house doing some kind of farming work. When I got done I discovered the ring was missing. I can show you within an acre where that ring is likely still. Since that time I have always wanted a nice ring to wear. Most of my life I have not worn rings because of the danger that they meant in my work. Once I came within inches of losing a finger because of my wedding ring which was the only ring I regularly wore. I quit wearing that ring. I have considered for maybe ten years having a ring made by the jeweler that made Erma's but I guess I simply was not ready. When Erma picked up her ring I was ready. In a week I will have a ring that is made entirely from gold of my last splatters and some gold from the dental work of my Mother. There will be some copper added to it to create a harder ring alloy but all the gold will be what I provided. So I will have gold from my last job and a remembrance from my Mother to wear on my hand.

When we leave Denver our plan is to start a slow return to Texas for the winter. We plan to spend some time in the Durango/Silverton area and photograph the trains there. If it works out we may ride the train again, which is something that we have not done in over forty years. We went to that area the first time in a VW Bug with a weeks worth of food in the backseat area along with a tent. We had a gasoline credit card, paid tickets for the train and ten dollars cash. When we got home nine days later we still had some cash left. I can guarantee that this time it will cost us a bunch more for the same length of time. But with any luck I will have some new pictures and stories to share with you.

Till Later This Is Doug Of
Peace On The Road