Contentment by design - Living

Did you know that one cubic yard of road base, which is a mix of gravel and clay, weighs about 2,800 pounds? We found this out the hard way this past week as we shoveled, moved, and raked about 12 cubic yards of it that we had delivered in order to repair our driveway after the intense rains of May and early June washed away a fair bit of it. How much is 2,800 pounds? Let me tell you: a lot!

I suppose wheelbarrows are pretty boring for most people, but I really like the custom one I put together in order to meet the challenge of maintaining our long (~160 yards) and steep (as much as 15 degrees) driveway that, just to keep things interesting, is sprinkled with a few Goathead thorns, which kill regular tubed tires effortlessly (when we first moved here, our original wheelbarrow tire lasted about 30 seconds).

My 6-cubic-ft steel wheelbarrow has dual flat-free tires and, most importantly, the genius innovation called Total Control handles that True Temper makes. When I'm moving road base, I don't quite fill the wheelbarrow, but nearly; I'd say my typical load is around 5 cubic feet, which comes to about 500 pounds. The combination of the dual tires and Total Control handles makes it possible for me to keep control of a load like that when I move it down our steep driveway. Before I had dual tires, I spilled loads in the wrong place a few times too many, and when I had plain wooden handles, I used to have to keep them and my leather gloves wet in order to keep a grip.

Anyway, after a week of intense work (this isn't quite what I pictured when I imagined what retirement would be like), the driveway repairs are finished. Which is all just a long, long way of saying that we really earned the chance to go for a hike up in the mountains yesterday. And I gotta tell you, it was so much more pleasant to work up a sweat climbing to an alpine lake than hauling gravel!

Shortly after leaving Bear Lake on our way to Bierstadt Lake, we came across this view I love—beautifully lit by the morning sunhine— of a glacial boulder field spilling down the hillside right towards the trail, nicely framed by aspens and pines.