Do I need a real coat, or should I just man up?

Click the pics... and pray for our president.

Old rusting ore carts laying on the side of the hill near Victor Colorado.

Mornings are still pretty chilly, usually mid-40s, when I crawl out of bed. Which means I have to turn on the radiant heater for a couple of hours now. But daytime temperatures are beautiful, the high 70s, low 80s, and humidity at 20 and 30%, its just about perfect, which is why Fall is my favorite time to be in Colorado.

One thing I noticed on my one-night camping trip is my light fleece jacket, which is the only coat I own, is not suitable for standing around outside for more than a few minutes when the temperatures are below freezing. I was wearing thermal underwear and an insulated shirt under my jacket, but I still felt pretty cold.

I think one of the reasons is, I'm simply not used to being outside for any length of time with the temperature in the 20s, and frankly, I don't want to get used to it. Another reason could be that back in the day when I was outside in those temperatures, I was doing something that required me to move around some, which tends to keep you warmer. But this time, I was just standing around, taking pictures, and not doing anything to keep my blood flowing, so I got cold really quick.

The reason this concerns me is that in a couple of weeks, I'm going to take a mini-vacation down to southern Colorado in search of the wiley Sandhill Crane, and since a lot of the searching could be early in the morning and late in the afternoon and involve standing still while taking pictures it could get to be pretty darn cold. And nowadays, I don't consider doing anything while I'm cold as being fun.

Now there's a fairly simple solution to this problem, and it's called "a coat." But not just any coat; it needs to be a coat that can keep an old geezer with no measurable circulation warm while standing still for half an hour in 20° weather. I used to own coats like that, but I gave them all away when I moved into the Arctic Fox because just one of those coats would take up my entire closet.

So what to do? I seldom need a coat like that, and a good coat is kind of expensive. But I might need it because I am also considering stopping by the Bosque Del Apache in New Mexico and taking some Snow Geese pictures on my way south. Oh well, I think I'll make a cup of coffee and think about it while I relax.

                                         theboondork

The town of Victor in the distance. What used to be a ghost town of mostly abandoned buildings looks like things are being fixed up and Victor's turning back into a real town.

The old Cresson Gold mine now renamed the Cripple Creek & Victor Gold mine is still operating and still producing  gold. Its claim to fame is being the richest gold mine in Colorado's history, and being home to the Cresson Vug. You should look that up on the Internet if you're interested in Vugs and things like that

The old Victor high school. One of its more famous students was the internationally known journalist, world traveler, and raconteur, Lowell Thomas who graduated from here in 1909.... Every once in a while I try to inject a little class and sophistication into my blog by using a word like raconteur, which is the French word for "someone who hunts raccoons."

Old mine in Victor Colorado

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks building. BPOE has been a popular fraternal order since the mid-1800s, and by the size of this building they must've had a large following in Victor back in the day.