I got to my property at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and it was 56 degrees, partly cloudy, and breezy, not a great start to my weekend.

I set my tent up with the fervent hope that tomorrow night will be the last time I ever have to sleep in a tent.

And its not just the tent that's the problem, its all the stuff you have to remember to bring with you when your tent camping that's the problem. when you camp in a camper you've probably got all of your camping needs already stored in the camper so all you need to get before you go is buy food.

Take sleeping for instance. to camp in the tent I take a cot, a foam pad for the cot, a sleeping bag, a spare blanket, and a pillow. and if any one of those things is left behind I could be in for an uncomfortable night. with a camper all those things are usually already there.

But the part I dislike the most is packing it all up to go home. by then I'm tired, dirty, sunburned, and badly in need of a good nights sleep. The cot has to be folded up, the sleeping bag has to be stuffed into a tiny bag, stove put away, my auntand lastly I have to try and stuff a wet, muddy, four man tent into a bag barely big enough to hold two naked mole rats. But with a truck camper I put down the top and drive away.

I knew when I set myself up for tent camping last summer that it may not work for me, after all I had spent many a night in a tent in various states of discomfort but I just didn't want to spend the money on something that I knew would be comfortable until I was sure that my concept of mini-vacations was going to be something I enjoyed, and last summer I really did enjoy my mini-vacations.

Ive been asked, why does a person like you who travels all the time to nice places need a vacation? Your life is a vacation! but that's not the way I look at my life. to me my Winter travels aren't a vacation, that's just me living my normal life in warm places. but summer is a time for going places and doing things I don't normally do, or cant do because of the size of the Arctic Fox.

So I think the Palomino Bronco is going to serve two purposes. one is allow me to visit places I don't want to or cant take the Arctic Fox. and the other is to give me an insight into living in a considerably smaller space to see if something like a van or a slide in truck camper would be feasible for me to possibly live in full time in the future.

                         theboondork

Another chilly wet day in Denver fortunately it looks like were going to break out of this weather tomorrow and the weekend should be okay.

At least I hope it's going to be okay because I'm heading up to my property at 11 mile reservoir to spend the weekend so hopefully the weather will be good enough for me to get out and climb up a hill or two. There won't be much climbing because I'm really out of shape, partly because I'm old, and partly because this winter in Arizona was so chilly and wet it wasn't conducive to getting outside as much as I normally would.

The other thing folks new to Colorado have to contend with besides the weather is the altitude. Since I've been away for six or seven months it takes me a while to acclimatize to this altitude again. It's pretty easy to get used to Denver's 5500 feet but my property is a little over 9000 feet so it takes some getting used to and a two day weekend is not nearly enough time especially at my age, so I have to be careful when I first go there that I don't climb up anything that would cause me to get dizzy and pass out from lack of oxygen or a sudden attack of geezerlyness.

I'm hoping to spend some time on mini-vacations to the high country this summer so I need to spend more time at my property becoming acclimatized to the altitude so a trip to the high country will be more enjoyable and less of a challenge.

When I spent those few days in New Mexico camped next to the mostly dried up Rio Grande, or the Río Bravo del Norte, as the Spanish named it. I had the urge to revisit the headwaters of the Rio Grande when I got back to Colorado. It's down in southern Colorado up in the San Juan's near the old mining town of Creed. It's been a long time since I visited that area and when I was there I was in my old Hallmark pop up truck camper, so I think it would be appropriate to visit it again in the Palomino Bronco pop up truck camper. I'm pretty sure it would bring back some great memories of running around in the mountains in a rig that could get me in and out of any place I had the nerve to go.

                   theboondork

It was an abnormally busy day for me, and I don't like busy days they interfere with my relaxing. And I especially don't like having to accomplish things when it's chilly and kind of wet outside.

I went to Home Depot and bought a sheet of 1 inch thick insulation foam for about 12 bucks, and cut it into pieces that will fit inside the bed of my truck to raise the floor of the bed up to the level of the fifth wheel hitch rails so now the, new to me, Palomino camper will sit level in the bed of the truck.

On the way back I stopped at Ace Hardware and filled up one of my propane tanks at $3.89 a gallon which is always the highest price I pay for propane no matter where I go.

When I got back to the house I had to get the chainsaw out of the garage and cut up some limbs that had broken off the tree in the front yard from the weight of the snow. I got to thinking that was the first time I've had a chainsaw in my hands in many a day.  It brought back long ago memories of cutting cords of firewood to heat my home every winter when I lived in the mountains. Toting heavy logs up steep hills, weeks of chain sawing and splitting, probably one of the reasons I have a bad back today. And I can't say I missed any of it.

                   theboondork