Thursday, July 8, 1999
Howdy
from the mountains. Locals like to refer to their areas by the height of the
surrounding mountains. Lake City has five 14’ers, meaning that they have five
mountains over 14,000 feet high (and twenty-six 13’ers). Speaking of being
high, Edith and I both seem to have a little altitude sickness. The symptoms are
headache and queasiness (flatulence too). It’s not too bad though, but we are
not yet doing any serious hiking. People have told us that it will take about
three days to get over it.
It rained for a few hours today, and it was mostly cloudy and about 70 degrees. Yesterday, I said I liked the sound of rain on the roof. Today, we added a rhythm section as we caught the water coming through the roof in cooking pots. I believe it was because of some gusty winds that may have lifted the shingles. Don’t worry – the cabin is fine, and the owners are very nice people. The cool breezes felt good. We saw several people returning from the high elevations in their open 4-wheel drives. They were really bundled up. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue this evening with puffy white clouds.
We have a screen door but no screens in the windows. It seems that screens are not needed in town since there are no bugs. However, when Edith and I were in the bushes by the river yesterday, the mosquitoes had no trouble finding us. Though the bugs may mistreat us, the people are very friendly. When Edith and I took our walk his morning, everyone greeted us including people in cars who waved (probably similar to Edith’s experiences during her recent visit to Rome and New York City). During our walk, I picked up a flyer at a small frame house on a back street with a For Sale sign. It had one bedroom and contained 700 square feet, bargain priced at $101,000. I picked up a local paper and saw that it is not unusual to see vacation homes priced at $300,000. I’ll need to save my money; maybe I’ll get another part-time job.
Well,
it looks like we were able to send our Email from town. The owner let us use her
phone and we removed the wires from the VISA machine, the answering machine and
telephone. We later re-assembled them. I sure hope that it’s all working okay.
It’s not easy to find a phone in town. There are two of them (one doesn’t
work) in a small park on the main street. Many times, several people are waiting
to use them.
Tomorrow we are going to take our first drive into the countryside. I KNOW my Subaru will be up to the challenge!
Later,
Carl