Hotchkiss | Life on a Colorado Farm

The water at Blue Mesa Reservoir is horribly low….Terry says it is down about the size of the length of a football field. Blue Mesa Reservoir is also an extremely long reservoir—20 miles long.

Taylor Reservoir is still frozen over, but starting to thaw. It is low also, but nothing like this. Taylor Reservoir flows into the Blue Mesa Reservoir along with tributaries from other creeks and rivers.

Going back home (on the way up we went through Montrose to Gunnison then to Almont) we took ‘the long way home’ over the rim of the Black Canyon to Crawford, Hotchkiss, and then Delta.

The Black Canyon is the pathway of the Gunnison River, from which our irrigation and drinking water arrives to us.

We saw lots of deer, some elk, but the best was this Cub…wandering across the road.

He/she was heading to the other side, where Momma was probably waiting.

Having a little trip was really nice…broke up the work so we felt refreshed and able to get ‘back at it’; glad to do so!

Off now to work in the yard. I’m planting. I have cut my amount down considerably…two years ago I had 175 containers in 9 beds. Last year I cut down to 75 containers and nine beds. This year….I’m tired. I have 10 containers and the nine beds which at times still seems too much.

Anyway off to plant!

Linda

I’ve had people asking questions about our train ride, so I thought I would answer this way.

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The train was a promotional train for Operation Lifesaver. Operation Lifesaver is an educational program taught on the train to eliminate collisions, deaths, and injuries at highway-rail intersections and on railroad rights-of-way.

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The ride is scheduled to take one hour to a destination and one hour back to the load-out zone. Tickets were free, but you had to hurry to get your name on the list, all four cars were packed with people. The train loaded and started up the track at 8:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 3:30 p.m. (the one we rode), and 6:00 p.m. (this one went to Grand Junction.

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All but the 6:00 train was scheduled to go to Paonia, Colorado, which took one hour, all trains made it to Paonia, but the afternoon train. Because we have three large (huge, very big) coal mines just above Paonia in the Somerset area, the afternoon train had to make way for the coal trains. The coal trains have/had priority. So the afternoon trains just went to Hotchkiss and sat on the track until the coal train went by.

The passenger cars were all 1940 plush cars, one with a dome. Everyone wanted to sit in the dome, but no one got to. All four cars were completely full, 2 to a seat. On the evening train to Grand Junction, only people enough to fill the dome car rode. These people had ‘special tickets’. Next year I want a special ticket!

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I, personally, enjoyed the ride. The train’s top speed was 45 miles an hour, because of the huge grades they had to pull, sometimes slowing to 25 miles an hour. To get to Hotchkiss from Delta, by car is only 25 minutes.

I travel that road many times a week. But to be on the train, going through a different area than the highway was really special!

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