Just so you don't have to go through life not knowing what a princess party is, these pictures should enlighten you. I have to admit I'm almost 75 years old and I didn't know what a princess party was either, but now that I've seen pictures of one I can see that I've missed a lot of opportunities to meet a princess by hanging around places where princesses don't normally congregate.

There was an actual photograph taken at the princess party so the kids could have a souvenir of all the princesses. And this is a picture I took of that photograph after it'd been carried around since yesterday afternoon by my granddaughter. It was showing a little ware.

I've spent some more time looking at slide-in truck campers on the Internet, and I think I see a pattern starting to develop, which is older truck campers seem to be priced at relatively normal prices but newer ones from about 2015 till now, are selling for a lot more than they should be. And it's not just because there newer, which would be normal, it seems to be because the older style of truck campers tend to look rather shabby after a few years so there's not much demand for the earlier models.

The problem with the affordable older ones is they almost always have aluminum exterior walls instead of fiberglass like the modern ones,  I'm  not thrilled about the way they look myself, and one reason is because they get dents and dings real easy. I'm familiar with this problem because my Hallmark pop-up truck camper had aluminum exterior walls.

Also the older truck campers, and in fact, older RVs in general tend to be upholstered with these weird old-fashioned colors and designs that make some of them look like antiques. I heard an RV salesman refer to that style as "grandma upholstery."

I've also noticed that the newer campers are somewhat lighter than the older ones, maybe they have better materials now, better building techniques, or perhaps they're just not built as strong. Whatever it is, I tend to like the truck campers that are less than five years old, but they usually cost a lot more than I'm willing to pay.

Usually, when it comes to problems like that, I would wait until a good deal comes along on a newer model, but the way things are going with the shortages of RVs, there's no telling how long before RV prices will get back to where they should be, if they ever do.

And now, with the government telling everybody to mask up again while indoors, what's that going to do to winter travel? Are businesses going to be able to stay open? Will people stop going back to work? Will some states completely shut down as they did before? Will state parks remain open? Will more people hit the road, further overloading RV parks, and driving up prices? It looks to me like more confusion, more apprehension, and a lot more uncertainty.

                                                             Theboondork

I now know that princesses like to dance a lot, and have a strange attraction to Mickey Mouse. Most females I've met were horrified of mice and would never get close to any mouse, especially one that large.

Apparently princesses like to spin and twirl a lot. Or maybe it's more like, spend and twirl.

My granddaughter next to a princess of some kind. I'm not really familiar with many princesses, but I did grow up cleaning the stalls, in the barn, where princesses kept their horses.

Apparently young princesses, or princesses in training, aren't afraid of female mice.

But despite all the mice at the party it appeared everyone was having a good time, and I'm sure some great memories were made despite the rodent infestation.

The cool front that we've been expecting for a few days rolled in late yesterday afternoon bringing cloudy, but thankfully, cooler weather.

Finally, it's cooled off and only got up to about 75° today. Of course, we had to pay for that with some showers and thunderstorms, but that's been almost a 20° drop from yesterday till today, and even though there's some rain and an increase in humidity involved, it still feels great.

Now that the temperatures will be a bit cooler for the next few days, I need to think of something outdoorsy I can do. I should do some work on the little Bronco; there are a few DIY things I would like to accomplish that is all but impossible when it's 95°, the outside of the camper is so hot you can barely touch it, and the sun glaring on the white roof is absolutely blinding.

But I'm not sure I'm in the mood to work on the little Bronco right now because I know that if I finally decide for sure to travel in the little Bronco this winter, my one-track mind will lock on the little Bronco and getting it ready will be the ONLY thing I think of.

There's a couple of nearby botanic gardens that I could visit and take pictures of some flowers, and this might be a good time to do it because Fall is not too far away, and there soon may no longer be any flowers to take pictures of in the Denver area.

There's also a colossal motocross track named Thunder Valley that's only a mile or so past Red Rocks Amphitheater. They have major motocross races there, but you can go in and watch the riders practice when they're not racing. Watching them sounds like fun to me and a lot safer than getting out there with them.

And speaking of racing, between Red Rocks and Thunder Valley motocross track, there's the nationally known drag-strip named Bandimere Speedway. Bandimere has been around since I was in elementary school. And I used to read about it and the races held there in my Hot Rod magazines when I was a teenager. But, of course, it's become a much bigger deal now with grandstands that seat 23,000 people.

So it does sound like I've got a few choices of things I could do. And they all sound like fun, so it appears the most challenging part is deciding WHAT to do. But I'm not going to give up just because it's a tough decision; I'm well known for my decisiveness.... So I'm going to sit right here in my easy chair until I figure out exactly what I want to do.... No matter how long it takes.

                                                                 Theboondork

While at the Red Rocks Museum I took a picture of this stuffed Grizzly Bear inside of a Plexiglas box, and the glare was terrible. But anyway, the point is there are City Slickers that are missing more than a few brain cells, from watching too many Disney movies, that want to reintroduce Grizzly Bears back into Colorado. And the reason being is they were at one time natural here, and being indigenous to Colorado we should bring them back again.

By that reasoning, we should also bring back the Tyrannosaurus, which was also indigenous to Colorado, and see how many city-folk he could consume in an afternoon.

The sun was in my face, so the lens flare was almost intolerable, but this is as close as they would let me get to the Red Rocks stage so every picture I took looked similar to this.

The Red Rocks venue really is incredible. It's a beautiful location, there's plenty of parking, and it has a reputation for exceptional acoustics.

This morning my granddaughter went to a Princess Party. I couldn't go because my princess costume was at the cleaners.

 I could've gone as a homeless beggar standing outside the castle door begging for a few farthings since I was already dressed for that. But it's hard to find a McDonald's that will take farthings anymore.

So I took this picture of Cinderella as she was leaving for the party. My daughter will take some cell phone pictures inside the party which I will try to post tomorrow.

I took this picture of some of the stairs at Red Rocks Amphitheater that were ahead of me, and there was actually this many, maybe  more,  behind me. Since the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, completed the Red Rocks facility in 1941 there wasn't much safety built into the place, so steep steps and limited handrails were perfectly normal then. The operative concept being "if you have trouble getting around the Red Rocks, don't go there."

These young folks are taking a break on their way to the top of the stairs, there was a lot of that going on. The sign on their left just above their heads is telling everyone where things are, like the visitor center, and the restrooms, and down at the bottom it had this little bit of information that you see in the picture below.

How often do you see a sign like that outside of a public building?

I took this picture of downtown Denver while visiting  Red Rocks. Denver's 16 miles away from the Rocks and as you can see is shrouded in smoke from the fires out West. You really couldn't tell it was smoky in less you looked way off into the distance, but there were plenty of smoke  warnings on the television and radio.

But despite the numerous smoke warnings their were still a lot of people running around and exercising at Red Rocks, breathing hard and sucking in the smoke. Like this guy in the bright red shorts, and matching bright yellow shoes, and the woman pretending to do push-ups off to the left.

It appeared to me everyone I saw exercising all had one thing in common, they were all around 40-ish, which is that terrible age where you suddenly realize your not a teenager anymore, and you're actually getting old. But that's something that happens to others, and you've decided you're not going to let it happen to you.

It doesn't take much Internet research to determine that you can easily ward off old age by eating right, and getting plenty of exercise. So off you go buying gym memberships, exercise equipment, yoga classes, and books on how to live to be 100,

40-ish folks will continue doing this, and more than likely over-doing this, off and on for maybe 10 or 15 years, until they've worn out their joints, from all the healthy jogging. Have a bad back, from the weight set  they bought. And put on an extra 25 or 30 pounds, because their always hungry from their healthy eating. After all how much arugula does it take to fill you up.

This soon leads to the realization that they physically can no longer do actual exercise anymore, and they've learned that eating fat-free, low-sodium, tofu burgers. Followed by a couple of McDonald's milkshakes, and a sixpack of beer is doing nothing good for their waistline.

This causes the now partially crippled, future heart attack candidates, to resign themselves to the inevitability of getting old, buy an RV shaped like a coffin, and spend the rest of their remaining days living in an RV Park swapping lies and war stories with other old geezers of similar decrepitude ........ The End!


PS.... Many thanks to Judith for expanding my vocabulary with the word decrepitude.
                                      
                                      Theboondork