July 30, 2000

Hello out there! Did you think we disappeared from the face of the earth? Not exactly, but we have kept ourselves involved and active. Well ready or not, here is the next Colorado Tales.

The saga of Saraland and water to our pond continues. In the latter part of May, our attorney advised that Sarah Al Jamaz would allow us to transfer water, which was being held in her illegally dug pond to ours, and that we should make the necessary arrangements. Well the weekend after Ken’s return from China, we walked onto the property to assess what needed to be done to bring the water down to our pond. Ken had a long talk with Sam Clark, who works for Sarah. However, we got the word on the Tuesday following Memorial Day that she considered we had trespassed on her property and the deal was off. What negative energy that created in us both. My way of relieving this was to take my hoe to the weeds and beat them, which I did for a couple of days.

The following weekend my live-in workshop in oil painting at Chautauqua Park took place. Teresa Vito was the artist who conducted the seminar. If I remember only 30% of what she taught, I will have improved and I definitely have. While at the seminar I experienced fatigue and burning in my right leg. By 10 p.m. I had to retire to my room, everyone else was still chatting and burning the midnight oil. Upon my return home from Chautauqua, the right side of my body from the hip down broke out in what I later found out was a case of the shingles. If you have had chicken pox as a kid and experience stress later in life, it can cause this condition. Thus, one of the stressful causes, was the Sarah-pond. It took a few weeks to go away even with medicine.

On June 8^th, my mother passed away, this was indeed very difficult, even thought I knew it was a blessing that it happened. So we arranged for mother to fly back to Connecticut where she is now next to my father and I’m sure if he could speak would say “Helen what took you so long”? I think about her everyday. If I was not able to make contact with friends in Connecticut, please understand, it was an extremely busy time.

One June 16^th, one of my teeth that had had a root canal performed on a year ago needed surgery. One of the roots was removed together with eliminating the infection in the tooth and gum area. It just so happened that we had arranged for a trip to Utah and Colorado starting June 17^th. So equipped with a large bottle of Advil we set off for Moab and the Arches. This is an incredibly beautiful national park with some of the neatest rock formations one can ever see. We did a 7 mile hike on Sunday starting off on the most popular trail and ending up on the primitive trail.

From Moab we traveled to Capitol Reef National Park. This park is noted for the 100-mile long indention in the earth. Geologists must love this area. Driving to this park, we took dirt roads for 40 – 50 miles and only saw two other vehicles during this time. It is always amazing to travel in these United States and experience the different terrain, views, and climate. It is wonderful to see and experience. Well during our stay we had planned to do a hike and visited the ranger station and asked about the Upper Muley Twist Trail. The woman ranger said, that is probably the best hike in the park, but we don’t get to hike that too often because it is 50 miles away from the visitor center. Well, we packed up a sandwich and as much water as we could carry and scurried off to Upper Muley Twist which started in a wash for the first 3 miles. Then the directions said to either climb up the waterfall where there were foot holds and hand holds, or take the easy route. We took the supposedly easy route, which turned out to be a friction climb. It scared the living daylights out of me. Ken kept saying don’t sit, or kneel, because you will slip off the rock and fall, trust your feet. Well, that is easier said then done. This hike finally took you to the ridgeline where you had a marvelous view of the 100-mile earth’s indention. Unfortunately at this time while hiking, it was so tiring and scary; I couldn’t appreciate the view. Since then looking at the photos, it is spectacular. This hike, which was 9 miles long, took over 6 hours during which time we consumed all of our water. As soon as we traveled a distance and came to a little roadside restaurant, we stopped and got an ice-cold coke. We drove back to Torrey, where we were staying at a bed and breakfast and found some dinner. The hot tub was wonderful to experience that night (about 10 p.m.).

From Capitol Reef we traveled to Bryce Canyon. Along the way we past Lake Powell, a beautiful oasis, man-made in the middle of the desert. Bryce Canyon itself when viewed from the observation points is immense and full of Whoo Doos, which you cannot really appreciate until you hike down into this area which we did, of course. Did you think any different? Hiking down into the canyon we encountered about 20 fire fighters on a training exercise and travelling up the canyon at a pace which was a fast as they could go. Some were really motoring. Anyway when you are in the canyon the Whoo Doos become more individual and it is really beautiful.

From Capitol Reef we traveled to Ouray (pronounced youraay) in the San Juan Mountains. This is a beautiful area. We did a little hiking and jeeping. One of the passes we traveled was on Engineer’s Pass, where you truly need 4-wheel drive. It is very slow going and quite exciting when encountering another vehicle – many sheer cliff drop offs.

We found out we were able to rent water from St. Vrain Water Conservancy and I immediately brought a check to them for 5-acre feet of water. Of course, to pump this water from the James Ditch, you need a pump, which Ken went out and purchased and made arrangements with Gordon Kennedy, the Ditch Boss for pumping 1-acre ft. of water. Ken calculated how long it would take to pump 1-acre foot of water and determined it would take 24 hours. Now the catch to this is that you need to refuel the pump with gas every 2 hours, day and night. So you got it, you set the alarm throughout the night for two hour intervals. Since the first pumping, Ken has arranged for 2 additional acre feet of water. The result is our pond is full and beautiful and I know the fish appreciate it as the pond was down 4 ft.

During the pumping of water into our pond, an engineering firm hired by Sarah’s attorneys to determine the cause of the drain’s low flow did some work on Sarah’s property to determine what was preventing the water flow. (I will try to keep this brief). One June 29^th, an engineer, Sarah’s attorney, Ken, Bill Gambrell, Water Commissioner, Sam Clark and Dave, machine operator dug three holes, it was determined that this 100 year old (or older) solid clay butt joined tile drain was in good condition from the east side of the pond dig and after clearing away blockage, etc, waster started flowing into the pond. Ken requested a 4^th hole be dug on the west side of the pond to locate the drain and observe what the excavation had done to it. Peter, Sarah’s attorney said he was not authorized to do this and thus the engineer could not gather the facts needed to confirm damage to the drain. On this day, the group of people mentioned above gathered on our property to see the change in water flow after clearing the blockage at the drain tile on the east side.

Early in July we requested our attorney to write to Richard Stenzel, Division Engineer, Water Division No.1 stating our case regarding the lack of water flowing into our pond, which was zero. Well, keep in mind the fact that on June 29^th, Ken was pumping water into our pond and the attorney who was present and on our property saw this was happening.

One July 14^th Peter Fleming, Sarah’s attorney writes a response to our attorney’s letter to the water division engineer stating we had water flow, which only occurred after the correction was made and that he did not understand why we were claiming damages to our water rights, as our pond was full. Daaa! He saw the pumping and understood why and deliberately wrote an incorrect assessment of the situation. You know all of the lawyer jokes, well this firm should be the brunt of all such jokes. Many strong negative thoughts have gone through my head from this dumb letter.

July was also a fun month. Debby, Nick,(from Denver) Ken and I planned a trip to Crested Butte. We had 9 friends from Connecticut travel to Colorado for a week’s vacation in Crested Butte where we met Debby and Nick and filled the Crystal Inn B&B. We enjoyed the hiking, mountain biking and the wild flower festival. Seven friends gathered at our home for a day or two before the caravan departure. Samson and Zeus had a lot of company and enjoyed the attention once our guests got past their intimidating greeting. We had a wonderful week of biking and hiking surrounded by millions of wild flowers. There were hikes arranged with botanists, medicinal herbalists with explanations of Rustler’s Gulch and where the rustlers would hid the cattle, walking through several streams and brooks ankle deep in water and making new friends along the way. Of course, I must mention the 360-degree scenery was spectacular.

After our return, some friends departed and Alan, Gail and Joe remained to attend a Ragtime Festival concert at Chris Finger Piano with 5 exceptional pianists. We sat in the first row and at several times during the performance of the evening all 5 artists played on grand pianos so that you looked from one to another.Looking throughout the audience,you could see smiles on everyone. You couldn’t help but smile. What a magnificent evening! These guys are playing difficult fingerbreaker material and do not even have to look at the keyboard or music. It was evident they were also having fun.

The summer is full of so many events and time seems to pass so quickly. I wish summer could be extended at least a month longer. There is so much to do and experience. Even with the stressful encounters the past couple of months have brought, you can’t have everything and life is good.

Love, Diane and Ken