I took a few pictures in the neighborhood of the leaves changing. This is my daughter's house, their trees are very slow to change colors, not sure why, and the trees, obviously embarrassed, are completely silent on the subject.

I've been thinking of heading down to Alamosa, Colorado, for a brief mini-vacation, but wondering how could I get that mini-vacation to fit in with me permanently moving out of the Arctic Fox and into the Lance? And then it hit me that what I could do is move into the Lance permanently sometime in the next week or so and then drive down to Alamosa after I've moved into the Lance. Then when I come back to Denver in a few days, I will continue living in the Lance until the time comes when I'm ready to head South for the Winter.

I might do that because dealing with the Bat flu for the last ten days cut into my mini-vacation time when I could have been running around the mountains. And now I'm sorta running out of time to load up the Lance with all of the stuff I need on a mini-vacation, and then come back to Denver three or four days later and have to unpack again. But if I can just put everything in the Lance that I need for my Winter travels, then I won't have to come back to Denver and unpack; I can just park in the driveway and live in the Lance for a while until I get ready to leave.

That should work out pretty well because I will have the Lance ready to live in for the winter when I go down to Alamosa. So the Alamosa mini-vacation will be a perfect shakedown cruise to see how the Lance will do with the weight of all my winter travel stuff in it, and not just my mini-vacation stuff.

The truck will have some mountains to climb, some mountain passes to go over, and some pretty chilly weather to contend with at that altitude by then, which will be a good test of my truck, battery bank, and my Little Buddy radiant heater.

Theboondork

These folks, just down the street from my daughter's house bought this camper van early this summer. It looks like an older model of a custom van that at one time must've been kind of expensive, but now, much like me, is showing its age.

This van was tan colored until a few weeks ago when it disappeared for a while and returned sorta battleship gray. I can only see it from a distance and it looked like it'd been painted with a spray can, which is never good. But taking this picture and seeing it close-up it appears to have been rolled with a rubbery bed-liner material which in my opinion looks worse than the spray cans would've looked.

I've never been able to see a name on it to know what company made it but it looks like one of those Earthroamer kind of things that may have been very cool and costly back in the day.

These neighbors had a lot of yellow flowers, I'm not sure what they are, but there sure were a lot of them.

I've been debating with myself about taking another mini-vacation before I leave for my winter travels, and I can't remember the last time I won a debate with myself. The reason is that even though I think I'm going to be leaving for my Winter travels this month, taking a mini-vacation might be wise, seeing as how I've never spent the Winter in the Lance before, and taking a mini-vacation right before I leave would let me know if I've loaded everything in the Lance that I need to live this Winter.

Making sure I've loaded everything I need is not the most important thing in the world since the last time I checked; I'm not going on an Arctic expedition, so I can buy whatever I happen to forget without any difficulties, especially considering the amount of time I spend boondocking in Walmart parking lots. Taking a mini-vacation would also give me some picture-taking opportunities, which have certainly been lacking these last couple of weeks.

I still haven't moved any of my lithium-iron batteries from the Arctic Fox to the Lance, and I need to get that done. I can't wait till the last minute because I've got to make cables for the batteries and ensure they work. But at the moment, I'm still living in the Arctic Fox, and I need all four of its batteries because where the Arctic Fox is parked, a large tree blocks a lot of the sunshine this time of year when the sun is lower on the horizon, so all four of its batteries are needed if it gets cloudy for a few days.

So I haven't made up my mind what to do yet, but I'm sure an idea will come to me, its just a matter of time, and time is very flexible for me. I do my best to bend it, and shape it, until it fits the way I want to live. Such is the way of the long-term boondocker.

                                                                                Theboondork

My granddaughter helping put up the Halloween decorations on the house. My grandson wasn't there, he was at a friends birthday party.

I took a Covid test this morning and finally tested negative!! I don't feel any different than I did two days ago when I last tested positive. This ordeal has gone on for about ten days and was more of a mental problem than a physical one. Since I have allergies and some of the Covid symptoms are the same as my allergy symptoms, I couldn't tell much difference in what was going on physically because I didn't feel much worse than I do when my allergies are bothering me.

So for me, it was more of a mental problem, worrying about what could happen if things go wrong because some people are still getting pretty sick with the Bat flu, and I had no way of telling if that would happen to me or not. Oh well, at least that's over; for how long, I don't know; I guess I'll have to look it up on the Internet and find out if I'm safe for a while.

I went for a walk around the block and took a few pictures, mostly concentrating on the rapidly approaching Fall foliage. It's still pretty early, but the weather is cooling off even more, so the leaves will start changing much faster.  Most of the ten-day forecast now has highs in the 60s with nighttime temperatures in the 40s, so I have to run my heater for an hour or so in the morning to warm up the Arctic Fox.

It sure will be great to get back to normal, and I've still got the urge to spend a little time up in the mountains to see the leaves changing and take a few pictures. I know that going into the mountains this time of year has crowds even worse than in the summer. It's bearable on weekdays, but all the leaf peepers on weekends make driving in the mountains scary at best.

I would also enjoy running down to Alamosa, Colorado, and taking pictures of the Sandhill Cranes passing through on their way south. Unfortunately, they don't have a lot of Sandhill Cranes there in the Fall, the largest concentrations are during the Spring on their way back up north, but it would be nice to see a few of them again.

Theboondork

My son-in-law putting up some Halloween decorations on the house.

My granddaughter showing off her missing teeth. She's getting rich, but the Tooth Fairies going broke.