Aug 6th - Raining Cats & Dogs in Cortez

The kids have taken off early this morning. Lynn and I meet Joe & Kathy for brunch at the Rico Hotel. Timmy, a close friend of theirs, is the chef. Although expensive for dinner, we have heard that the hotel has the best food around and Timmy’s brunch proves out. Our next door neighbor Annie is our waitress.

Today will be my 4th trip to Cortez this week -- 48 miles from Rico to Cortez. Arriving in Cortez it starts to rain and I mean rain. They get 2 or 3 inches in an hour, very unusual for this dryland town. It's obvious that the dry land can't handle this much rain & the streets are overflowing with water and some of the downtown areas have water over the side walks and coming in front doors…the dry arroyos are overflowing.

We get our hardware needs taken care and do our weekly shopping for groceries. We’ve added a small fridge to our tiny apt which helps us store more food. With only a convenience store in town and the high grocery prices in Telluride, Cortez is our closest alternative for food supply. We really are trying to get our “shoe box" (Lynn's appropriate nickname for the apartment) as well organized as we can and with the addition of Lynn’s stuff, our space is even tighter. Every square inch counts!

Coming from a 2,000 sq ft house to an efficiency apartment has its challenges, but we are managing. Joe has given me some used cabinets and shelving which have helped with our space challenge. I’ve added some new outlets to the room and a swivel TV shelf for mounting the TV on the wall. That 27" sucker is heavy and I nearly dropped it getting it onto the pedestal.