Good morning everyone and Happy Saturday! It is another cloudy day here and a bit chilly, though not too bad for this time of year. It is presently 46F (8C) and should make it to 50F (10C). Not much difference really. Next week the temps will cool off just a bit beginning on Wednesday. But it is the end of October now. This is the time of year that dad and I would go out looking for insulators along the railway.

It was usually chilly and cloudy, sometimes with flurries too. But it was a nice time to go out. There was one time, however, that I was going out by myself. I stopped at my favorite restaurant first for breakfast. Krissy asked what I had planned for the day. I told her that I was going to check out a lonely stretch along the railway that dad and I had never been down before.

Some nice yellow aspens by an old foundation.

She did not like the idea of me going out alone, especially along that stretch where there was nothing for miles. She went back to the kitchen and came out with breakfast for herself too and sat with me. She also told me she was coming too, that I should never be going out alone. She had mentioned that on other occasions too. She had gotten permission from her mom to come with me.

Her mom came out just before we left with two large thermoses of coffee for us as well. This is a little older than last week’s story and Krissy was 17 at this time. Off we went and I drove as close as I could, then we had to walk about 1km to the railway. Okay, it turned out to be 1 mile instead, but I was kind of close. It was fairly easy walking though, except perhaps for that one hill, which we basically slid down.

A country road and bright yellow aspens against the blue sky.

“That will be hard to climb back up,” said Krissy. “Minor detail,” I said. She just looked at me. We finally arrived at our destination and immediately found some insulators on the ground. There was 20 of them which we left to pick up on the way back. This first part was through a low-lying area, but it had been dry that year so we were able to look around those poles and found some crossarms that otherwise would have been under water.

Twice we found a nice purple insulator and some in a nice dark olive green. Both are popular colors with collectors. We then came to a high hill but it was easy to climb up and the poles on that hill were very short so it was easy to retrieve insulators without any problem. Plus we found many that had been tossed into the trees years ago as they reduced the number of lines in use.

We actually were finding more than we could possibly carry out with us, so we just kept the very best. The remainder we hid a little further back in the trees just in case we wanted to come and pick them up some day. We never did return there however. We stopped to rest and enjoy our coffee. Oddly, nothing funny or strange happened to us. That was good I guess.

More aspens along a different country road.

On the way back as we walked along the tracks, trains came from both directions and since this was the low area we had to slide down the side of the embankment. I tripped on something sliding down and ended up on my back going head first into the tall grass below. Krissy was rolling and landed on top of me.

Krissy was a small girl but with all those insulators in her backpack she landed with quite a thud. “Are we getting up?” I asked. “I want to rest,” she said. “But I am upside down,” I reminded her. “Minor detail,” she said smiling. “Very funny,” I said. I will leave it there for now, but there is more to come. The sun is actually trying to shine. Have a wonderful weekend everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.