Lots of Food!

Yesterday morning (at 8- too early!), Thayer and I drove into Crested Butte. CB is about a twenty minute drive from Gothic and is an adorable Colorado-touristy town. Lots of restaurants, coffee shops (many roast their own coffee), silver- and gold-smiths, and outdoor outfitters.
[T - it's about 8 streets wide by 10 streets long or something. Very cute and small. They also have a big store that just sells fancypants sunglasses. I was impressed. Also while we were in town, we went into the little local grocery store and got eggs and carrots and a fireplace lighter and soap. Some stuff is really expensive, but vegetarian organic eggs were only like 3 dollars a dozen! The cashier told us that some people seem to have problems with those fireplace lighters at the altitude here, but it lit just fine for me. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe as it runs lower on fuel it will be more frustrating]
In front of the local health food store, we located the truck and truck-driver of our natural foods bulk order. It was like Christmas- so many delightful boxes full of delicious treats. We loaded our Subaru full of boxes before walking over to Camp 4 Coffee. I had one of the most delicious cafe au laits ever. It was such a treat after being in our cabin for two weeks.
[T- it wasn't quite as exciting for me. Mostly I just got to hold it and spill coffee on myself as we drove down the bumpy dirt road home]
Here's a view of most of our loot (excluding frozen things, which had already been put away).
And a select list of some of our goodies:
-one case of Yorkshire Gold Tea
-one case of Newman's Own Ginger-O's
-5 lbs. of pistachios
-5 lbs. of walnuts
-2 cases chocolate almond milk
-one case organic "nutella"
[T- I can't eat it though, it turns out - it has peanut traces. The Kroeger one we bought in Gunnison is safe though, and J is more into nutella than me anyway so it all works out]
Yes, we made out pretty well. Don't worry, there are healthy foods in that pile, too. All of this food is in preparation for winter, which is definitely coming quickly now. We have cold rainstorms every afternoon, sometimes with sleet or hail. The small bit of morning sunshine is doing less and less to take the chill off the cold air.
[T- we have yet to see the sun so far today. It's quite chilly]
The marmots seem to agree with us, as we're seeing very little of them now. Sometimes they'll be out in the morning sun munching on thistle, but they're spending much more time in their burrows. Soon, they'll be hunkering down for the winter in their social burrows (an article about social hibernation in yellow-bellied marmots) and we won't see them at all. The aspens are changing colors in funny little patches. Some have lost all their leaves and some are still green (microclimates!).
And we finally used our woodstove for the first time yesterday.
[T- some of the wood was a little wet, but we coaxed it into going eventually. A bellows would have been handy, but I couldn't find one so I gave my lungs a workout instead. Once it gets going in that stove, it puts out a delightful amount of heat. That stylish window screening you see leaning against it is the technologically advanced ember guard I was using while we had the stove open. It actually worked very well, even if it wasn't intended for said use. In the pile of paper recycling you can see to the left of the stove, J found a Gunnison newspaper that was all hilarious postings for things like "beautiful donkeys for sale" and "found: one blue fiberglass oar on fifth street." One guy advertised that he would be willing to help elk hunters carry their elk kill in exchange for some delicious elk meat. Another ad was posted by someone who was interested in purchasing an AK-47 Assault Rifle and meteorites. Yep, that's pretty much all the ad said. He wanted an assault rifle, and also, meteorites.]
And speaking of preparing for winter, I'm working on a pair of knee socks with some sock wool that Thayer gave me. Here are their feet, complete with heels. I've now picked up those stitches around the open part and am knitting some legs onto them. It's a new pattern at which all knitters should take a look.