A major reason I became a full-timer

A beautiful Fall day fly fishing on the river.

Another beautiful Fall day, a high of 70, and low 40s last night. But what happens in the Fall around here is it can change rather quickly, and that's why we can have a 40% chance of snow predicted for Thursday, with a predicted high of 37° and a low of 24°, but the predicted high for Wednesday is 73°.

I think after this cold snap the leaves will change very quick and it will look like Fall by next weekend. Usually some cold weather and a little snow will remind the trees that winters on the way and they'd better get ready.

I'm still doing odd jobs around the Arctic Fox getting things ready to go. I usually save my serious cleaning till last, partially because if I vacuum the floors now I'll just get them dirty again while I'm working in here, and partially because I'm lazy and I procrastinate as long as possible.

                         theboondork

There's a lot of beautiful country in the Pike national forest. It's over a million acres and covers seven counties, and it's only one of the many national forest in Colorado. It offers all of the boondocking, trail riding, hunting and fishing, hiking, and exploring you could ever want and it's all public land.

Of course there's a bad side to everything that's good, for instance that mountain in the background used to be covered with trees but a forest fire came along and wiped It out, which is one of the downside to living near the National Forest. What you see here are some of the scars from the Hayman fire. An arsonist started the Hayman fire in 2002 and it burned almost 140,000 acres, it was the largest forest fire in Colorado history. Over 5000 people had to evacuate including my family and I. Fortunately the firefighters stopped it before it got to my town.

They say it takes over 100 years for the forest to come back to life after a fire in Colorado, things grow very slowly here. the Hayman fire happened about 17 years ago and the burn area is hardly any different than when I drove through it a couple of weeks after the fire. I went through another evacuation during the Waldo Canyon fire in 2012, which though smaller, for a while was the most destructive fire in Colorado history. This fire got within a mile of my house. These two events played a big part in my decision to be a full-timer and never again have my entire life anchored in one spot.