Downtown Tincup. All of Tincup is private property and most buildings are vacant for most of the year. But even though there vacant, neighbors take trespassing very seriously and watch after each others property. And they don't jjust call the sheriff, he's too far away, so your trial, and your punishment, is handled by the good folks of Tincup. And you can consider yourself lucky if all you get is a butt load of buckshot.

Since it's pretty chilly in the afternoons and sometimes rains, I've had a lot of indoor time to work on the Lance and make it more.... Homey.

It had venetian blinds on all the windows; But I've taken them off and thrown them away. I now have curtains on the living room and kitchen window, but nothing on the two bedroom windows yet. I'm thinking I might just put some reflectix on the windows, or maybe some thin foam for insulation. But I haven't made up my mind yet.

I had several boxes of stuff I took out of the Arctic Fox and put in the Lance to be used on this minivacation, and I've been slowly putting some stuff away in the Lance and throwing away a lot of stuff that I no longer feel I need. So since I'm going to have to empty the Arctic Fox, I will have to get much better at getting rid of stuff that I don't need. And that's why my tools are such a problem; I never know what tool I'm going to need.

After sleeping on my bed in the East-West position, which is the way I've always slept in a truck camper, I turned it around to the north-south position today to see how it works out. Just looking at it, it seems more difficult because my pillow is so far away, and it appears there's going to be a lot of crawling to get in and out of bed, but I'll give it a few nights so that I can say I tried.

Theboondork

Nothing new has been built around here in quite some time, but things do fall apart ever now and then, so the town does get smaller.

Even If you don't fix anything else in your house, you really have to fix the roof. An old log cabin can deal with a lot of problems, but when the roof goes... Everything goes, and this is a good example of that.

You can see at the upper right-hand corner of the roof that the roof used to be planks, probably covered with tar-paper. And somewhere along the line shakes were added to the roof. And later on more planks were added and tin was nailed on top of the planks. But something happened to the tin on that corner and it came off, could've been the 80 mile an hour winds and the 8 feet of snow, exposing all that old wood underneath, and now the wooden roof is quickly turning into dust. Which just goes to show that if you can't fix anything else, at least fix the roof.

I know this looks like a barn but it's actually a carriage house.

One of the streams that feed into Taylor reservoir. This is cold, clear, mountain water, and it's popular with the local fishermen. Some folks even drag their boats all the way up the pass just to fish in real mountain water. Like we always say about Colorado water, "we drink it first."

I've been running around the mountains all day so all I have for everyone is pictures.

Tincup is at the foot of those big peaks in the background.

Before you get to Tincup there's an old log building that is a country store, gas station, and restaurant. And it's a gathering place for a lot of the off-road guys that meet up here before they head out for the trails. This area is a very popular destination for ATVs and dirt bikes.

Making plans for the ride. A lot of off-roaders meet here because there's two huge parking lots where they can leave their ATV and motorcycle trailers.

This is a boondocking area where I've stayed before, but I've never seen more than two or three RVs here in the past, and now it looks like an RV Park.

This is another place I've boondocked, and actually I've never seen anybody stay here before. I don't know what's going on, I keep looking at my calendar thinking it must be a holiday or something, but it's not, its just an ordinary Tuesday.

The Tincup general store, where you can buy an actual tincup, which is guaranteed to burn your lips off if you ever try to drink hot coffee out of it.

The Tincup courthouse.

The Colorado high country is very rugged, only a few people come here on purpose, miners, Elk hunters, and occasionally tourist, but none of those folks stay for long.

Another great day to be running around the high country. It got up to the mid-70s today but that was only between the hours of two and four, the rest of the day was long sleeve shirt weather for me. It got down to the low 40s last night, so it was pretty chilly when I woke up this morning.

I walked up and down a few hills to get some pictures, but it takes longer than a couple of days to get used to walking up hills at 10,000 feet of altitude, which is what Tincup happens to be. So I did a lot more relaxing than I did walking.

I drove over to downtown Tincup and even though I enjoyed the drive, and just being there, I am finding somethings to complain about. And to boil my complaint down to its simplest form; THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE HERE!

First of all, I always come to Tincup in July or August, so this is about when I normally visit Tincup, and it started yesterday when I got to the top of Cottonwood pass and found the whole place full of cars with no place to park, I've never seen that before, not even close. I was also disappointed that there was no snow at the top of the pass, I don't remember ever seeing that before either. But it's been a dry winter for Colorado so that must've been the problem.

But today when I went running around to see things the whole area is packed with people. Yesterday I thought it was odd that I got the last campsite in this Forest Service camping area. I've never even seen it half-full before. ATVs and dirt bikes were everywhere, they're allowed to ride on the roads around here, and it looked like everybody in Denver was up here on an off-road vehicle.

Why is this? What's going on? I've been coming here for over 25 years, including either last year or the year before, and I've never seen anything even approaching the crowds that are here now. Is this caused by the bat flu changing everybody's life? Is it because some folks can't afford a cross-country vacation anymore so there staying local? Is it because all of those back-ordered RVs have finally arrived?

Whatever it is I don't like it, but it appears to be a sign of the future. It breaks my heart to see the Tincup area overrun with so many people, it used to be one of my happy places, but at the moment, I'm not sure it will stay that way.

Theboondork

There's plenty of mountains around Tincup, in fact it appears to be surrounded by mountains. And depending on your level of energy there's old mining trails going above timberline made by the mules that hauled the mining equipment up to the top of these mountains, and the gold ore back out again. There too rugged for vehicles except dirt motorcycles or hiking. I had an old Yamaha 360 dirt-bike that I rode up the mountains around Tincup back in the day. Now my hiking is just in the hills, I'm happy just being close to the mountains, I don't have to be at the top anymore.

Sunrise near Tincup. I should've taken more snapshots of the sunrise but it was too cold to hang around outside for long. Most of the day is fine temperature wise, but around sunrise and sunset it starts to get very chilly, very quick.

As I had feared when I came here this week, the clouds that I hoped for were here in abundance, in fact an overabundance, so nice sunrise and sunset pictures were few and far between because the clouds were just too thick.

It's either too cloudy or not cloudy enough, too hot or too cold, too many people or not enough people.... Scratch that !!! There's never not enough people.