Morning in the 'hood

 

I love watching sunrise as it creeps down into the valley, here the tower is first hit by it at 7:32 am on Sept. 10. 

 I captured it on Aug. 17 at 7:03 am...just to notice the difference as our days get shorter!

The tower is from an old power plant, now a science museum with interactive things for kids to do. After all, this is a tourist town, and families need something else to do besides riding the train to Silverton!

Early in the day this funny looking machine travels along the train tracks.  It has a long arm, and big wheels resting on dollies to go along the tracks. I imagine it's to clear debris like fallen stones, tree limbs or trash that might have fallen along the tracks before the tourists start their tours to Silverton around 8:30 am. Taken at 7:37 am on Sept 10.

There are several businesses as well as homes that I see out my window. Several large buildings are empty, as well as a few of the houses. You can see how hard it is for my eyes to adjust from the glaring sun into the darker areas.

I seldom hear birds because there are so many garbage trucks collecting...it seems each business has a different one! The town also sends out trucks which have an arm to lift up the trash bins and toss the garbage into the trucks. There are still two men required to do this, one to drive, and one to position the bins where they are somehow strapped into the lifting arms.

Here in the old town of Durango, there are alleys, where the bins are arranged and ready for the toss! It reminds me of living in St. Louis when I was growing up. There would be ice deliveries and knife/scissor sharpener wagons that I saw...often pulled by a horse (in the 1950s)

The first train to Silverton usually passes by around 8:20.

And right afterward I noticed this little electric cart going along as well. The driver had parked his car in an empty lot earlier, and carried his cooler (lunch I suppose) into a kind of corral next to the tracks. Where did the cart come from, since the 8 o'clock train had just gone by? Anyway, the guy was dressed in requisite coveralls of the train crews. How did I know? I've got binoculars...like any good voyeur! But if he had the cart in that corral, I was at the wrong angle to see it. He waited about 5 minutes before following the train north.

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Viktor Frankl’s quote, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”