Changes

Clicking the pics may change your life..... Becoming nauseous when you look at a picture could be considered a change.

Saturday night on the beach.

Since Larry was kind, and observant enough to make me aware of the fires in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and particularly at Storrie Lake State Park, where I would normally stay, my first thought when hearing this news was to run away... Run fast, run far. But after sleeping on that information last night and looking at all the options, I've come to realize my first inclination was correct, so running away while screaming like a little girl, will be implemented relatively soon.

I don't like forest fires and have some really bad memories of my family and I having to evacuate our little part of Colorado during two of them. So it's not just the physical problem of me being near a forest fire and the inherent smoke; it's the agonizing memories that continue to be stirred up whenever I hear about a forest fire in the vicinity.

So I think that I will head northeast through New Mexico and hit some state parks that are well clear of Storrie Lake, and that will give me a week or so to see how Storrie Lake state Park shakes out with the fires. Then as long as the fires don't affect I-25, I should be able to shoot on into Colorado without a problem.

These are strange times; it seems that between the bat flu, and the forest fires, life hasn't been working out the way I assume it would.

But that's actually a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Like many old geezers, I tend to get stuck in a rut, doing the same thing, in the same places, week after week, year after year. And as much as I try to fight that way of life, it's all too easy for me to get drawn back into it. It's just too effortless, and yes even natural, for us geezers and geezeretts to do things the way we've always done them, and the way we've always done them is always the least challenging way.

 We old folks don't take the "road less traveled," as Robert Frost suggested; we take the road worn bare by the sneakered feet of thousands that have tread before us, why? Because that's the way we've always done it, and any deviation from the road MOST traveled is.... new, and if it's new it must be Intimidating, and probably downright frightening.

I haven't always thought that change was good, in the past I was too busy making a living and raising a family to think about it. But when I retired I figured out that change challenges me; change forces me to overcome obstacles, change makes me think. And even though I can't prove it, I believe that change keeps me feeling young. After all, young people's lives are full of changes and challenges; it's us old fossils that want everything to stay the same... exactly the same.

Theboondork

Tamarisk blooms. For some strange reason this is the only flower I've seen blooming at Elephant Butte State Park.... Maybe it's the drought. The Tamarisk are very hardy and can withstand almost anything including sustained drought. The Tamarisk are the Carp of the tree family.

Nighttime fishing on the beach.

Houseboat renters. I guess they didn't need a sliding board.

This guy appears to be having fun, he might think he's on a roller coaster... But he's probably just waving to my camera.