I'm under 15 feet of pure white snow.

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Day 3 in the new country house, without water for 3 days and now the power has gone down. What a freaking surprising adventure this is turning out to be.


Birdhouse and our Christmas Tree

Things have not gone to plan as yet. We drove up from Denver via Montana, an ardous 11 hour trip, the 8th day in a row of such trips. Imagine how wretched I was feeling at this point.

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Ice hanging off our roof with a view to the Pump room with solar panels.

As our place is not the easiest to find we arranged to meet the former owner at a place we both know and he was to show us up the mountain. Unbelievably it was dark by 4 pm so we had to drive in the black of night with snow falling and on the roads. Welcome to the Winter Wonderland Countess. (grimace)

Ice, ice baby.

The drive up was steep and on unpaved road and as far as I am concerned, it was treacherous. That was enough to set me into a near fit of hysterics. I have seen it in the daytime and it’s much worse. One can see the mountains and hills and the drop on one side. I have been told not to worry, if one were to go off the side the trees will eventually brake my fall. Charming indeed.

Perhaps one day I will be appreciate to the view and the surrounds, perhaps one day I will by able to drive up there on my own. Crikey.

We arrived at the new abode only to find out from the owner that the pipes had frozen and burst and there was NO WATER. Indeed. I wanted to go right back to town into a hotel, but there was to be none of that. We have a water well on the property and with some borrowed buckets from the former owner we were to make do.

The Colonel on the tractor off to plow the road. We have to plow 2 miles of road, it's a long way from the concrete jungle. The day will come when I will have to get into that hunk of metal and do the plowing. (panic attack)

Not only did we sorely need to shower, clothes are in dire need of a wash.

On day two the former owner arrived and worked on the problem, thinking it was fixed he left only for me to discover that in a short time it stopped working but not before flooding the master bedroom.

As we don’t have our furniture yet, our mattress has been plonked down on the floor in there. It was soaked. Now we have no water, no dry place to sleep and our room smells of wet carpet.

It’s day three and the power has gone out, we have no idea why, we have a solar panel system, off the grid and all that and it’s all rather complicated for me to deal with. The plumber is here working on the water problem and I just heard him say, ‘oh shit’. Not a good sign readers. I believe he will be needed to get into a wall to fix the myriad of plumbing problems that seem to be popping up. Joy oh joy.

View from one of our rooms.

Moving to the country, I'm going to eat me a lot of peaches. The mountain change was the Colonel's dream and I am just along for the ride. So far I am not having the best time. The only reason I have not topped myself is because I can’t decide, a bullet in the head or an overdose on pills. Sucking a revolver is not a good option as it’s far to cold to be putting any metal in my mouth, nuff said.

This mountian change is not quite so wonderful at the moment. Perhaps when I finally have running water, power and my furniture arrives giving me a chair to sit on, TV and Internet I will feel much happier about the move.

Title from the song by Nick Cave

All pictures apart from the picture of the Idaho sign taken on our property.

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