How did we ever find time to work for a living?  Something we hear from active retirees all the time and we’re no exception. A good routine of exercise, recreation and ADL’s (activities of daily living) can take up most the time in a day, but when there’s those “extra
chores” like volunteer projects, maintenance on Silverton properties, repairs, and getting ready for winter, there just isn’t any time left to get old.  It’s rumored that naps are available to senior citizens, but those coupons must be getting lost in all the junk mail. There’s hardly time to do the fun things like tech support for friends or blogging.

However, when you notice that those faces and ages in the obit’s page are your age or younger, it’s probably a good thing being “back to back busy” — not to mention lucky. Practicing the tenets of “Younger Next Year” has worked so far, and keeps the need for naps at bay.  I remember the joke about a woman who said she lost 175 pounds by getting a divorce. I’d just like to lose some of those nagging “pounds” in Silverton. And then there’d be lots more time for projects in Durango, like remodeling our shower.

Right now, we’re not starting anything new or major, just wrapping up loose ends and eating down the stores in the larder and frig. Thailand looms on the horizon in early December and somehow that sounds a bit more restful.

Looking thru the week’s photos reveals some of the chores, projects and celebrations we’ve had.

Right in the middle of “The Crown,” Netflix’s wonderful series on Queen Elizabeth, our flat screen bellied up. You Tube is rife with videos on how to repair it; best was one posted with the narrating voice saying no less than 6 times, “I’m a girl, you can do this.”

So, as per usual (or maybe 99% of the time), Radio Shack was out of stock on the correct capacitors “the girl” recommended for replacement. Amazon is sending us four new capacitors to be soldered in the TV motherboard.

Stanna got her new loom that seems like a toy compared to the last one.

She found a good home for the giant Gilmakra locally and now has a Schacht Baby Wolf that doesn’t need the entire living room.  Weaving is already underway with a warp of dishtowel yarn.

One more solar barn raising project provided a Durango home with 5kW of photovoltaics at about $1 a watt.  Twelve people showed up and 20 panels got installed in less than 2 hours.  The talking, camaraderie and lunch took another two, but that’s when the newbies get to ask questions and get excited about their upcoming installations.  Our group is close to having installed 250kW here in Durango over the past 3 years.

Stanna’s ladies hiking group is still hitting the trails Wednesdays.  As the cold, hunting season and snow close off the high country, they venture south and west.  In this photo they went south of Farmington, New Mexico to the Bisti Badlands, a wilderness reserve famous for it’s petrified logs and trees.  This week they are West of Cortez hiking in the Canyon of the Ancients, a BLM wilderness area famous for it’s ruins and petroglyphs. We’ll leave for Thailand before the ladies start snowshoeing on Wednesdays.

There was a milestone passed last week when tg finally dipped into the seventies. Our Portland family hand crafted birthday greetings, which we posted on the china cabinet for the subdued celebration.

Donna and Chris joined us for a Surf & Turf supper at Casa Condo where the service is good and prices fair. For a first time menu the food was exceptionally good.

And just to show you the holidays aren’t far off, some Forest Service WIS Volunteers and San Juan Mountain Association folks got a permit to cut 20 White Fir trees, in a specific thinning area of the forest.  They’ll be offered along with the Oregon shipment of Xmas Trees the SJMA sells as a fund raiser starting on November 22nd.  The grove in which we cut these trees was so thick it actually felt good to be taking some away.

For those of you in the Mac world, the newest update to Photos has some very interesting “recognition” features. It’s had pretty good facial recognition in the past, but that feature has been taken to another level, Object recognition now spots things like trees, boats, beaches, bicycles, mountains and more. Another remarkable feature takes faces, dates, or a location and makes a “Memory” album from it’s recognition capabilities.

This can be helpful in finding a photo when you can’t remember the date. Or if you’re just curious to see how many beach photos you’ve got in your library by simply typing in “beach” in the Search area.

You can’t imagine how many “boats” the Search function located in my library. It even distinguished between sailing boats and boats in general.

Another feature that’s been around for a while in Photos is the ability to find a photo by location.  If you’re using an iPhone or camera that has geo-location, Photos puts those photos on it’s world map.

You can zoom the map to more detail expanding a country, a state, a national park to see where each photo was taken. Yes, geo-location on photos posted on Facebook or Instagram may be problematic if you don’t want someone tagging your home, but for travel and adventure it’s  a real advantage.

I’ve used the object identification to find a specific bike packing rig I used on the Great Divide ride for example. With almost 25,000 photos in my photo library at this time it’s helpful. It’s uncanny how the software can suss out a bike wheel, or handlebars.

One new feature I’d never imagined is how the updated Photo App puts together “Memories” albums that are complete slideshows with music and titles based on a location, time period or most amazingly on two or more people, selecting only photos based on those selected people’s faces.

Photos (the application) selected a trip in 2010 that McKenny’s and Kurt and Carol were on for a “memorable” slideshow for example. What a super surprise and joy to see a slideshow featuring friends from over 6 years ago. You can change the title and/or the music with a click if you’d prefer a better title than “June 6”.

If you haven’t explored this new version of Photos in OS X Sierra you’ve got a wonderful treat coming.

Mostly social things have kept us close to home lately. Chris George had his 78th and is in good form. Great fun catching up with friends and hearing about their travels and families.

Lots of tech support and a couple days working on a rental.

Spent a Saturday doing a local Solar Home Tour with Carol Martin, where we learned something at every one of the 9 homes we visited. Saw installations on million dollar homes, an off the grid earth home and an Air B & B rental not to mention regular single family homes.  (BTW our latest installation is cranking out plenty of kW’s)

Most unusual home was built by an former Intel engineer that had almost every energy trick you could think of, including what he called a “battery” of hot water storage in 3 levels of Pex tubing under his garage cement floor.

Speaking of unusual, Mike Taylor needed help removing a pack rat nest in the ventilation cowling of his engine compartment.  Toyota wasn’t interested in taking that part of his newer truck apart evidently. The nest was about 8 inches in diameter and the rodents had dragged all sorts of things up into that secluded home.  A  missing glove was funny, but the book of matches was just plain weird.

A couple of arduous day hikes kept the legs limber, but nothing overnight on the calendar until later in the month when we’ll head to the desert. Eager to test out a couple of newer UL acquisitions.

Catching up with friends, chores, mail, exercise and getting back into our routine.  Best was a weekend visit with McKenney’s in Ridgway, with Kurt & Carol and us driving north to stay with them.  Good friends, good food and good hikes.  Kurt isn’t shown because he took the best photos and shared them for the blog.

Drive and hiking was spectacular due to a recent snowfall above treeline which accented the fall colors with white mountain tops on the three mountain passes north to Ridgway.

We’re used to seeing various shades of Fall yellow aspens, but this year the red-leafed aspens were at their best.

One indication of time going fast is needing to renew your passports.  We’ve got our request in for another 10 years.  Hopefully the 52-page version will last this decade.

The Gilmakra Loom is gone and the living room is almost back to normal.  Still lacking a coffee table.  Stanna will order a smaller 24″ loom to replace the behemoth 48″ 10-headle model. And, it’s time to shut off the deck watering system and pull the plants, as a freeze is promised for next week.

Hardest thing has been getting back to the gym routine after 3 weeks.  Spinning and yoga has felt foreign to the body this last week. I did squeeze in a WIS hike in the LaPlatas with my UL buddies before the snow gets more serious.  Looks like “one more summer” has gone.

And if you haven’t upgraded to iOS 10 and Mac OS X Sierra, they are welcome upgrades. And I’m very pleased with the iPhone 7: It’s waterproof which should save me considerable trouble and expense.

Oh, and the solar array for C-1 finally got energized with the power company, so we have another 3.5kW contributing to renewable energy.

Happy to help or advise on installing your own solar system.

I’m currently setting up my Charitable Foundation so don’t send any contributions until I get my email server re-configured.

We’ve always tried to finish out Swiss adventures in Zermatt primarily because there is a fondue restaurant that has been a Birthday tradition. As this trip was focused on day hiking so that folks might want to join us this year, we’d allowed three days’ hiking in Zermatt. This gave us an opportunity to take trails that we’d never been on in the past.

Similiar to our tracks in Grindelwald, we basically found trails in the four quardents of the valley and were able to view Zermatt and the Matterhorn from various angles, heights and terrain. Not many folks on the trails like in the other regions, probably because Zermatt offers so many modes of uphill travel – trains, funiculars, gondolas, chairlifts and cabinas.

Zermatt, and viewing it’s Matterhorn, is on the world tourist’s bucket list. Most are here for selfies, DSLR classic photographs and checking off the list, so there isn’t as much interest in hiking per se. Which makes for virtually empty trails despite the tens of thousands visiting town daily.

It had snowed above 8,000′ the days before our arrival, and the first morning our hike was in dense fog and snow on the trails. For only the third time in 3 weeks did we don our raingear. We snapped a lot of Matterhorn photos ourselves, never knowing if this glimpse would be our last.

Zermatt’s heavy tourism makes for intriguing people watching.  As a private car-less community the narrow streets are all basically walking streets. The winning feature was this extremely quiet street vacuum.

It was very rewarding to look from the other side of the valley and see and identify our routes high across the opposite mountains.
We did visit our favorite restaurant for their other fondue speciality before we left.

Murren is one of those “supposedly” car-less villages high up from the valley above Lauterbrunen still in the Bernese Oberland. It’s quite popular for hiking but most famous for it’s gondola to the Schlithorn observation point perched atop Piz Gloria. It’s also directly across from Wengen, another cliff side community accessible only by cog railway.

Back in the 70’s before there were the ubiquitous Swiss trail signs there were only yellow and blue paint stripes on exposed rocks in the alp (remember an alp is the grassy meadow between the rocks, cliffs, peaks and palisades). Three of us were backpacking (frowned upon even then) up from Kandersteg toward Grindelwald, when in dense fog we lost track of our route only to come up on the backside of the massive Schlithorn gondola station and restaurant.  Not sure who was more shocked, us or the few tourist out on the observation deck seeing us appear one by one like apparitions out out the mist.

We hiked thru Murren when we hiked the Via Alpina two years ago and wanted to visit and hike some adjacent trails.  Weather has been outstanding for the first 14 days, but the mountains finally let in a low pressure system of fog and drizzle.  With our UL rain gear we had no problem enjoying a 9 mile hike and 2,800′ ascent. Best was trying out our new zPacks rain skirts, which turned out great: far easier to put on than rain pants and no problem climbing or descending rocky trails.

How could we forget Locarno in the southern lake district of Switzerland. We only took one alpine hike in the area but we wanted to see what the Italian version of hiking was like & it was very rewarding. First I should say that the the train rides in and out of that area are spectacular. They are part of the Glacier Express, an exclusive panoramic rail tour from St Moritz to Zermatt. Although we didn’t travel on the actual Glacier Express cars, we traveled a regional train on the same rails in a different style without white table cloths and waiters, catered service and meals.

Locarno is a truly Italian town; although the Swiss people are educated with three languages there’s hardly any evidence of anything but Italian spoken in this region. It has a true Mediterranean feel, warmth and altitude. Definitely an urban environment, lots of people in high density, but it’s easy to get out of the city and quickly into the mountains which provided great hiking and wonderful views.

What was unique on this particular trip and hike was we got to hike through a number of stone villages and past farm houses. Many are no longer occupied and some are partially occupied with upgraded amenities but all of them are far away from roads with access by trails and aerial tramways in which to get supplies only up to these remote alpine locations.

Saturday night in the main plaza they had a Risotto Rice food festival at which all the hotel chefs created their fanciest risotto rice dishes.  We chose to try a quinoa burger instead.

Here’s our track in case you’re interested.

 I’ve lost track.  Fortunately GaiaGPS knows where we are and what we have done. Thirteenth day of travel and hiking and it’s getting hard to figure what to feature on the blog. Currently we’re in the Grindelwald valley, our fourth day here and we’ve done a number of hikes that we have never done before, several really notable hikes including one below the north face of Eiger and another panoramic view of the entire Grindelwald valley.

I’ve been coming to this valley since 1975 and I’ve never gotten up close and personal with the Eiger north wall like we did this time.  They just recently placed these maps showing the climbing routes, this one the original climb in 1938. Was really fun to look at the map and look at the wall and actually see where a climber may have actually gone and how they get to the top. The current record for climbing this wall is two hours and 20 minutes by a solo Swiss climber.

In many past times the peak of the Eiger was shrouded in clouds like any high peak in Switzerland. This trip we’ve been able to see the Eiger clearly in blue skies which are often called Swiss calendar days. On our third day here we took the panoramic hike high on the northeast side of the Grindelwald valley from Schynige Platte to Grosse Scheidegg. 

With little or no wind, the humidity and pollution from the valley comes up and leaves a little bit of “marine or atmospheric” layer clouding the view, but it is still outstanding. This trail is so popular because they have a funicular train that takes you to the beginning and you can take a gondola off the other end.

Three more days here and Murren and then we’re in Zermatt.

The real reason we came to Vals was the check out the baths. Daniel learned of the Therme because it is an example of famous Swiss architecture; he has visited & told us that we should visit too.

These several photographs don’t begin to do it justice as we spent over two hours wandering through the various rooms and chambers experiencing a variety of water temperatures, chambers, chimes and scented water before I even thought to take photographs. It must be about a 20,000 square-foot building with more than half of that dedicated to water features.

One dark tiny stone room (with 20′ ceilings – which was the architectural standard) had a low padded bench where you accidentally discover a head rest at one end and you lie down to a bell and chime soundtrack. Anyone familiar with Shavasana could immediately assume the pose and fall into that resting trance some call the corpse pose.

Oh, and then we must have visited the 42* hot water chamber at least four times, between fragrant water pools, the steam rooms in three increasing degrees, or the waterfall massage spouts, to mention a few.

This experience could be the most relaxed I’ve ever been, or at least in 100 years. It was hard to leave one room and explore finding another as they are virtually unmarked and very subtly presented. The mineral waters are so clear and calming you move in slow motion in the waters as well as between the rooms. The entire structure is designed with Vals stone, quarried locally. It’s very hard not to want some of these water features in your own home or at least in your own town.

Here is the link to the Public GaiaGPS https://www.gaiagps.com/datasummary/track/d2c6b5406cfd473fc42128935deb336d/ where you can learn more about our track and see other tracks in the vicinity.

Only one hike in the Val’s region.  Posted above is the link to it on GaiaGPS’s website.  This is an experiment to see how this looks on blog.

Another experiment was taking a timer photo on my hiking pole.

You have to look close for the blue phone case on the pole.