My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

The day started off beautiful! Sun is out, and it is nice and warm. Robert and his boys planned to meet us around noon or so, for the trip to Moab. During the morning, we spent some time outside. Ben played with mom in the garden dirt with his tractor and dump truck. I worked on measuring out the fence, and trying to figure out how to build it. The hardest part will be in the garden area, working around the grapevines, garden steps, irrigation lines etc. That will be phase 1. The second phase will be around the rest of the yard, which will be pretty easy.

The view from mom’s yard is always gorgeous. She looks at the Colorado Monument, which is always gorgeous.

Robert was a little late, calling us at 12:30 to say he had entered the valley. We then left mom’s to meet up with Robert at the McDonalds in Fruita. We also stopped at the car wash so we could both wash our cars and bikes. Everything got a little dirty in all the snow the day before. We finally got on the road around 2 pm. Instead of taking the direct route, we decided to take route 128, which follows the Colorado River, and is the scenic route. Scenic hardly described it! It was absolutely gorgeous! All the red cliffs were amazing. Not unlike the Glenwood Canyon, but the reds in the rocks were out of this world.

We arrived in Moab around 4, and went straight to the condo. The condo itself is very nice, set into red rocks, to create a very private condo. There is a hot tub just off the master bedroom, which is sure to get some good use. From the condo, we can see red rock cliffs that line the valley, with the snow covered LaSalle Peaks in the background.

For dinner we went to the Moab Brewpub. Service was slow, but the beers and food were very good. I had a Chili Verde Pork Burrito. A little spicy, but very good. Puts the Green Chile Burrito to shame. The rest of the evening was uneventful, where we looked forward to touring the next day.

We left the house 1t 9:55 am, 5 min ahead of schedule, a minor miracle for us. We had to make a few stops on the way out of town, the bank – with donuts for the kids, and a coffee shop to get Lalie and me a skinny Latte. So it was about 10:30 before we actually got on the highway.

The trip itself was pretty uneventful. The kids either listened to Hannah’s I pod, or watched a movie on the DVD player. After we got into the mountains, and were out of radio range, Lalie and I listened to a book on tape. This particular one was title Desparation by Stephen King. We got through the first two tapes before we hit Grand Junction. So far, it is about several people who are traveling through the middle of Nowhere in Nevada, and get pulled over by a psycho cop. So far, he has killed two people, but jailed the rest. The cop also seems to have control of the Coyotes, and the Buzzards, calling them at will.

The weather was cloudy, but fairly warm when we left Fort Collins, in the upper 40’s. It stayed that way until we were going up Eisenhower pass, where it began to snow but not heavy enough to cause any major issues. Pretty much the same going up the eastern side of Vail pass, but coming down the western side was a different story. It became blizzard like in a few locations, and I was really thankful we decided to not bring the trailer…for the likelihood of hitting snow in the passes. The uphill side was in worse shape with several jackknifed semis. We found out later that they actually closed the highway shortly thereafter, so we made it through in the nick of time.

We stopped for lunch at the Wendy’s in Edwards, which is pretty much the halfway point. From there, we made it through to GJ with few problems, other than some rain. Once we got there, we sat on the back porch with mom drinking Ice Tea. The weather was partly cloudy, and eventually rained. Mom made a delicious Pork Roast for dinner. Afterwards, we took the kids to Cold Stone for Ice Cream.

All in all a pretty good trip. We did the whole thing in about 5 hours, with only 1 stop. Pretty amazing for us.

It seems like a short time between winter and spring this year. Not much more than a week ago we were still having frigid temperatures. The last of the snow finally melted in our yard this week, with most of it gone a week ago.

Now this week, we have tulip bulbs coming up, and crocuses too! Won’t be long before I am at it, cutting everything down and getting the yard ready for another showcase summer. Hopefully we will be on more of a normal moisture cycle this year. The past seven years we have been in this house have certainly been eratic from a weather and moisture standpoint. Not much to build or landscape in the garden this year, which is good, cuase this spring we are painting the exterior of the house. That will be a project.

I am also looking for large 20 inch or so hanging baskets for our porch. If anyone knows were to get some, please let me know!

It has been awhile since I blogged. I apologize to everyone, but to be honest I havn’t really been inspired for awhile, or perhaps I just had a serious case of writers block.

This has been a strange winter around here. The last postings I did were of our pre-Christmas blizzard. Oddly enough, a week after that storm, we had another pretty big one, and it seems a weekly storm of some sort. And it has been VERY COLD this winter! Usually we get an arctic blast for a week or so in the winter, then it is over. And we always have some very warm days during the winter when we can get out and enjoy life, go for a walk, play a round of golf, ride bikes, or even clean up the yard a little bit.

Not this year…we are in week 7 of cold snowy weather. The snow from the blizzard is STILL on the ground! and we have hardly had any days above 40, with most of them in the 20’s and 30’s, or colder. I am getting cabin fever big time. I have a burning desire to build something, but it is way too cold in the garage to fire up the woodshop. Even though the garage is fully insulated, it would cost a fortune to crank up the space heaters to get the temperature into the mid 40’s so I could work without gloves. Fortunately, I did figure out how to completely drain the trailer this year, so hopefully no broken pipes this time! I need a break from this weather…Calgon take me away!

On the bright side, business has picked up dramatically in the last couple of weeks! If this keeps up, it looks like this will be a good year, and my inspiration is starting to make a comeback!

OK, so I am a couple of days late posting, but I found this one in January! This wonderful project is a perfect example of what not to do for project planning and streetscape design! This particular apartment project is in Castle Rock, Colorado, next door to one of my projects. They both were designed and approved roughly at the same time, but what a difference in concepts and execution!

The apartment home site was originally a beautifully sloping site vegetated with scrub oak and other native plants. The developers of the apartment homes probably had a standard building plan they wanted to use (usually on flat sites), so in order to get that product to work on this site, they had to construct some incredible retaining walls to pull this off. The picture shows the result of what happened along the public street adjacent to the site. Not only are the walls incredibly tall (around 40 feet at one point), they were designed without any anesthetics in mind. There is no variation in color, no pattern, nothing. Just a huge homogeneous wall. Then, they didn’t even bother to screen it plant material, trees, or shrubs. Just a few trees scattered here and there. Ugly.

Watch for my other post of our project coming up shortly.