The weather here in Denver has gotten a lot easier to deal with. Highs in the high 80s and lows in the low 60s makes most of the day a lot more comfortable than it was a week or so ago.

I'm looking forward to August for several reasons. First of all, it actually cools off a little bit in August. I know August is the worst in most places, but around here, July is usually our hottest month. But the most important thing is in August the tourists will start leaving town. The roads will become navigable again. The parks won't be as crowded, and the little mountain towns will become a pleasure to visit instead of a challenge.

As usual, I don't know what I'm going to do this winter. This will be my sixth year of full-timing, and I never know what I'm going to do until I do it. But this year its worse than usual because  not only don't know what I'm going to do, or when I'm going to do it, this time I don't even know what I CAN do thanks to the Bat flu.

I'm considering staying here for the holidays, but dealing with the cold and snow and the very real chances of my pipes freezing have me worried. Depending on the Bat flu situation, the holidays are a time when families are living closer together. There's a lot of shopping going on with crowds of people everywhere. The anti-symptomatic people running around that aren't sick, but they can make you sick has me more than a little concerned.
    
On the other hand, depending on what's going on with the Bat flu, will other states even let me in without a hassle? Will the state parks in New Mexico still be closed to camping? Will the events that I like to go to, such as the rodeo at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Arizona, be canceled? Will boondocking be limited on BLM land? Will there be even more RVs in the Southwest than usual, not only trying to get away from the wintertime Bat flu but escaping their cities that are in turmoil?

There are many unknowns this year, so figuring out what to do is not going to be easy. I've just spent the last five years making my full-timing lifestyle as easy and stress-free as possible, and now my life is getting as complicated and as stressful as my normal life.... Bummer!

                      theboondork

Weird alien plant I found near my campsite. It's like no flower I've ever seen before, could it be that it's not a flower but something more malevolent?

A close-up of this "flower" reveals it's true sinister alien nature. It appears to be some sort of "nest" full of alien eggs destined to one day hatch into strange creatures that will become politicians and rule over the earth. Who knows maybe their already here.

As if that "flower" wasn't proof enough, further down the road I found this. Which is obviously a Martian outpost where the aliens that spread those infernal seeds live and work. The flying saucer launch ramp is clearly visible on the building that has the metal radiation shielding on it. You have to admit no human, or at least no sober human could build a building so technically advanced and yet look like it was built by a demented psychotic drunken Crack head. Were all DOOMED!

Old hotel in Fairplay. This might be where the aliens stay when visiting Earth. Notice the large rooftop space antenna disguised as a hotel sign. Why would an ancient hotel in a tiny little mountain town need an antenna capable of reaching the other side of the galaxy. Unless of course that's where their  RESERVATIONS are coming from!!!

The foothills roll on and on while the high country looms in the background still 50 miles away.

I didn't wake up until 8:30 this morning, probably because I was tired from that grueling 120 Mile drive yesterday. Okay, so it wasn't exactly grueling, but it was mountain driving, so I had to turn the steering wheel a lot.

Once I did manage to crawl out of bed, I made a cup of coffee, plopped down in my easy chair and set about making plans for all the things I wanted to accomplish today. Because it's mighty hard to accomplish anything if you don't know what you need to accomplish and that requires a lot of thought... I woke up about an hour later,  and decided the first thing I wanted to accomplish was staying awake for the remainder of the day.

I usually don't take naps right after I get out of bed. I believe that was caused by my not getting enough sleep in the little Bronco camper due to its mattress not being exceptionally comfortable. I added a 2-inch thick memory foam layer to the top of the bed right after buying it, but it was some inexpensive Walmart memory foam, which lost its memory shortly after I bought it, now neither one of us has enough memory to know what we're doing or why.

By the time I got motivated enough to do anything useful, it was lunchtime, and another two hours had been wasted with me accomplishing nothing more than eating. My dad always told me that after eating a meal you can't go walking around, or was it swimming? Maybe it was drinking Tequila. Whatever it was you will get the cramps if you do it, so you should always wait for an hour or two, maybe three, after a meal before you do anything. I know this must be true because my dad always took a nap after lunch, and I never saw him get the cramps. By the way, this doesn't affect females because my mom was still working around the house right after eating with no ill effects whatsoever.

Now, here it is early afternoon. Its too hot to do anything that requires moving around which leaves me with nothing to do for the day except write my blog. And fortunately for me writing, my blog requires no physical or mental effort at all. So I guess I'll have to wait till tomorrow to determine if this camping trip got me out of my rut and helped me overcome the lazy mood I'm in.

                    theboondork

Highway 24 rolls out of the high Plains and through Colorado Springs. It undulates across the foothills right through the middle of Woodland Park, the town I used to live in, and into the High Country where it intersects I-70 near the ski resort of Vail. It's the main route to get to some of the ski areas in this part of Colorado.

Besides Highway 24 you're also looking at what remains of the last building in the ghost town of Glentivar. When I moved to Colorado that pile of wood was still a log cabin, but time and tides have taken their toll.

Old business alongside the highway. To me it's more than just an old building. It's hopes and dreams, success and failure. And the life and death of a past generation.

I drove through Fairplay on the way back to Denver and took a few pictures of the old buildings in town.

I got back to Denver a little before lunch this morning, and the drive back from the mountains was a lot better than when I came back on the same road a couple of weeks ago.

I wanted to take the same route that I took when I went camping with the family to see the difference between dealing with tourists and traveling locals, on the weekend in the mountains, or normal weekdays in the mountains. And I'm happy to say it was a lot better. There were still many people, cars, and RVs running around. Still, it was nothing compared to the hordes of Denver weekenders that filled up the roads, little mountain towns, and campgrounds.

So I feel a bit better now about taking a mini-vacation when the time comes. If I stay away from the commercial campgrounds and national forest "improved" campgrounds, I should be able to find a place to spend the night in the "dispersed" camping areas.

It looks like Colorado state parks are all but hopeless to stay at without a reservation in less you just happen to luck into a site. But making reservations is not my style if I can possibly help it. Feeling that part of the joy of full-timing and boondocking is to be able to come and go when and where I please without a schedule that tells me I have to pack up and leave in the morning, even though I may want to stay another day or two.

So I had a good time on my brief camping trip I learned a few things, and I'm still trying to sort out the little Bronco camper to make it more comfortable for me to live in. It works out okay as a weekender, but it's still somewhat inconvenient to live in it any longer than that. But I have to say that the four 100 watt solar panels that I put on it, and the two AGM batteries that it came with  have worked great. So far, they've supplied all my electrical needs and haven't let me down yet.

I can't believe it's almost August, and as usual, time is flying by unbelievably fast. I just hope history holds true and most of the tourists will leave town the second week of August, and there will be more opportunities for me to visit the mountains.

                       theboondork

An Early afternoon thunderstorm rolled in with a little rain and some pea sized hail. The temperature dropped into the mid-40s while it was doing its thing. But I stayed warm and, amazingly enough dry, in the little Bronco.

After the thunderstorm blew itself out I had a nice sunset.

Pink and purple wildflowers. And a tiny little bug doing his thing.
As usual I've still got more pictures of my trip to show another day.