I really liked the South Fork campsite but the flies got to me. Suddenly there were hundreds of them! When I’d try to sit outside, I’d have 20 or so on me, which seemed really creepy even though they weren’t biting. So I left and wandered up to Granite, which had campsites that sounded good but weren’t. I kept going to Leadville and found some wonderful campsites perched above Halfmoon Creek, in the lodgepole pine forest. It’s about 8 miles to town and of course, no cell signal. I see I’m going to have to wean myself away from the internet on this trip!
Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the U.S. at 10,152’, and it’s surrounded by “Fourteeners” (mountains more than 14,000’ high) It’s a really cool little silver, lead and gold rush town with about 4 or 5 blocks of old historic buildings turned into shops & eateries. Leadville hosted a number of old west scalawags such as Doc Holliday, the Unsinkable Molly Brown, Bat Masterson, Soapy Smith (of Skagway, Alaska fame), and Oscar Wilde. There are a lot of really cute small Victorian homes to drive by and drool over.
I am doing pretty well with the high altitude but I do wake up with slight headaches. They sell canned oxygen in the grocery store here, and there’s also an Oxygen Bar in town.
I got all excited about a place called High Mountain Pies but it turned out to be a pizza place, not a pie place. I went into a bakery and was disappointed that they had no bread for sale. The lady told me it’s really difficult to make good bread or cakes at this elevation….I hadn’t thought about that. I got a chocolate eclair that was out of this world good though.
I had a nice neighbor lady a couple hundred feet away who arrived shortly after I did. She’s got a goofy gallumping 7 month old puppy that appears to be mostly Rhodesian Ridgeback. He and Roxie really liked each other though Roxie doesn’t play nearly as long as he wants. His energy knows no bounds. I am surprised by the number of people camping in tents here, with nighttime temps around 35 degrees!. I couldn’t do it without heat, even in the camper, let alone a flimsy tent! The daytime temps are perfect; 70-75 but rain is on the way…looks like it could be 5 days of it! But I don’t see anywhere else that would be any different, so I guess I’ll stay. I guess I’ll think about trying to cover my front skylight somehow, so it doesn’t leak. I have looked a zillion times and I can’t see anywhere the rain could get in, but water collects at the bottom lip and runs down the inside roof.
I can’t believe I’ve been gone less than two weeks. It feels like forever, and I still think longingly for my sweet little tiny house. I want so badly to get it done! But I know I can’t work in the kind of summer heat we have. It was supposed to be livable by the time the summer rolled around. Sigh.
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Little Bitty Living 