Mountain sunrise. I usually don't like getting out of bed early enough to see the sunrise, I figure the suns been coming up every morning since long before I was born so it doesn't need my help. But in the mountains I can get up later because it takes a while for the sun to clear the mountains which gives me a little extra sleep.

As I mentioned yesterday I removed the little Bronco camper from the bed of the truck. I don't know if a truck can smile, but I felt like it was smiling when I lifted that 1600 pound camper off its back.

I took the foam boards that the camper sits on out of the truck and stored them inside the camper. I also unplugged the rearview camera monitor from the truck and stored that inside the camper also.

I've taken everything out of the little Bronco that will be damaged by freezing weather, so now I'm hoping it's ready to safely hibernate all winter and patiently wait for my return in the spring.

I'm really glad I bought the little Bronco. I think my previous plans for camping in a tent while running around in the mountains would've limited the places and times I would go based mainly on the weather. the freezing cold nights I dealt with in the Alamosa area probably would've scared me off were I sleeping in a tent, and I never would've got to experience the good times I had taking pictures of the wily but good-natured Sandhill Cranes.

This morning, feeling flush from the fairly substantial accomplishment of removing the little Bronco camper, I put my storage box and the Anderson fifth wheel hitch back in the truck, so now I look like a real full-timer again.

Accomplishing this has removed any excuse for me not getting my oil changed and the tires rotated. I might even call my insurance company, I've got the lizard, and have them fix my cracked windshield; it seems like I'm averaging a new windshield about every three years. Boondocker's are no strangers to dirt roads, and driving on dirt roads is an excellent way of getting cracked windshields.

Today is Halloween, but not your typical Halloween, thanks to the Bat flu. My daughter and son-in-law have a small Halloween celebration planned that doesn't include taking the kids up and down the street knocking on doors and begging for candy. They are having one of my grandson's friends come over, they're in school together every day, so this shouldn't be a problem. And they're fixing up a haunted house in the garage for the kids to play in. Their also hiding candy in the backyard, sorta like Easter eggs, for the kids to find. Definitely not a typical Halloween, but 2020 is not a typical year.

                                    theboondork

Downtown Main Street, Alamosa. The Alamosa downtown area has had more than its share of redevelopment, some of which was caused by fires. So to me it looks more like the buildings are from the 1940s and 50s than the 1870s when the town was established.

Old po-boy mine. There's old mines like this all over the Colorado mountains and their most definitely not safe to be around. The hundred year old structures can fall on you. The tunnels or  shafts can cave in. Or a stope that you have no way of knowing is there can collapse under your feet if it was mined too close to the surface.

All those large gray areas are Aspen trees after their leaves have fallen off.

It got up to 60° today, and all the snow has melted from the little Bronco camper's storage area, so I took the little Bronco off the back of the truck and put it away for the winter. That's always a bittersweet time for me because it means I'm transitioning from one kind of life to another, leaving behind one life that I love and evolving into another that I also love.

For the full-time RVer, life is always about change. For some, it's a change a few times a year. For others, it's a change almost weekly. It could be a change out of necessity or a change simply for the joy of being on the road. But change is why most of us full-timers do what we do.

I guess you could say we like change because we've never found the one perfect place to be. I suppose we should be jealous of the folks that live in homes without wheels. They have somehow managed to find a place to live for 50 years where the weather is excellent year-round, their neighbors are all wonderful human beings, and they genuinely enjoy going to the same places and doing the same thing day after day... Year after year.....  decade after decade.

Nope! Not for me; I've never found any place like that and would be surprised if a place like that actually exists. I think what happens is people are very adaptable and can learn to live in whatever situation or surroundings they find themselves. For financial reasons, health reasons, or reasons known only to them, they can live there whether they enjoy it or not.

And I reckon that will happen to me one day as I become more and more geezerly and have less and less desire to hitch up the trailer and go someplace new. But right now, I'm still in pretty good shape and can always remember my name, although I can't remember anybody else's. I know where I'm at and where I'm going, but only because I have a GPS. And I enjoy going to places I've never been before; actually, I have been there before, I just don't remember....so it's almost like not being there before.

                                theboondork

Alamosa Colorado was a big train town back in the day, so they consider trains a large part of their heritage. To me this is a good example of protecting an old train to the point where you can't even get a decent picture of it.

The town not only put a 7 foot fence around the whole area, they put a 5 foot fence around the raised area where the train sits. And both of the fences are locked up, making it all but impossible to get a picture of the train.

The weather has improved considerably with highs in the low 60s and lows in the low 40s, where it looks like it will stay for the next ten days at least. The improving weather will give me a chance to get some outdoor stuff done, such as taking the little Bronco camper off the truck to start getting the truck ready for its winter travels.

It appears there's not a single flower left in the yard that hasn't frozen and died, so it looks like I won't be taking any more flower pictures for the blog. However, I might have some leftover flower pictures that never got used. I usually take enough pictures when I go somewhere that I can't use them up while I'm on the trip, so I save some of them for times like this when there's not much going on.

And when I look back at my old pictures sometimes, they remind me of things I should have done; for instance, Alamosa is only a little over an hour's drive to the headwaters of the Rio Grande. And I've been talking about visiting the headwaters of the Rio Grande for quite some time and never seem to get around to it, which I blame on my one-track mind that finds it all but impossible to be interested in more than one thing at a time. But this full-time life I'm living now often offers more than one opportunity at a time, and I think my life might be better lived if I could be interested in more than one thing at once.

Maybe I should work on that. But before I could fix that problem, I would have to fix my procrastination issues. But, to do that, I would have to deal with my laziness, indecisiveness, and serendipitous attitude towards life.... That all sounds like way too much effort to solve a one-track mind problem. I think it's easier just to live with it.

                              theboondork

There's a rail yard in Alamosa right downtown where there's a bunch of old trains sitting around. Nothing is fenced off so I assume you can walk right up to the trains if you wanted to.

But my one track mind was focused on Sandhill Cranes at the moment so these old trains didn't interest  me until I got back home and looked at the pictures.

It was only then it hit me that I should have hung around longer and taken some close-up pictures of these beautiful old trains... It looks like  a mini-vacation is already developing for next summer.