How geezerly is too geezerly?

The Easter weekend fun is over, there's nothing left to do but click the pics.

My new boondocking spot.

Some people call this boondocking area, "the old fish hatchery," because it used to be a fish hatchery, but not for quite some time.

Other people call this the dam site, because it's the site of the Elephant Butte Dam, which is only a couple of hundred yards up the river from me.

I actually managed to scrape together enough ambition to pack up and leave my favorite boondocking spot at Elephant Butte State Park in New Mexico and go to the Walmart in "T or C," stopping along the way to refill a propane tank.

After accomplishing everything I needed to do, I drove down to the Rio Grande Canyon below the Elephant Butte dam to boondock for a while. I don't know if that "a while" can be measured in days or weeks, and since I like to surprise myself, I really don't want to know until I wake up on the morning I feel like leaving.

Camping in this place is kind of weird, I sort of like it, and sort of don't. I like the trail that runs alongside the river. This is a place that birders like to come to, so I see a lot of them taking pictures. It's definitely not crowded I seldom see more than two or three RVs here besides myself. And it has mostly easy to use pull-through sites, which of course I couldn't care less about driving the bronco.

But on the other hand this place is $10 a night, when I could be boondocking for free three miles away at Elephant Butte state Park. And frankly, I find the Rio Grande River that's roughly 50 feet from my boondocking site, rather depressing. There's very little water, its not moving, it's filled with algae, and compared to the pristine beauty of the Rio Grande as it flows out of the Colorado mountains, what winds up here is, as I said, depressing.

But getting back to living without a schedule. Most normal people enjoy the planning, anticipation, and certainty of knowing where they're going and when they are going to be there, but I've worked at enough jobs in my life that kept me on a schedule and made me bend and shape myself to fit into a tiny little "job box" of rules, regulations, and deadlines, that continuing to live that way by imposing those rules on myself, never made any sense to me.

But like I say, I know I'm not typical. Most normal folks don't like the feeling of not knowing where they're going to sleep tonight or if they're going to get their meals on time, but to me, it's a challenge, a teeny tiny challenge to be sure, but a challenge to overcome, nonetheless.

I realize one day, when I'm old and even more geezerly than I am now, I probably won't have the physical and mental abilities to do these things and live the way I do now. But until then, I feel perfectly happy and capable of living the way I do, and still have the resourcefulness to overcome the challenges that keep me feeling like I'm living and not just existing.

Theboondork

This is kind of strange, but more than likely coincidental. While I was at the City of Rocks State Park, this van was boondocked just down the road from me. And I took a picture of it because it looked like a cow.... Who wouldn't? It looked like a cow!

Then I moved over to Caballo Lake state Park, and the next day I see the cow van boondocked down the road from me.

 That converted camper bread truck was also with them at City Of Rocks

After a few days I moved to Elephant Butte state Park and lo and behold two days later I see the cow van, and the accompanying bread truck parked on one of the beachs about a quarter-mile away.

There are probably several ways this could be explained, but the most logical explanation would be; great minds and boondocker's tend to think alike.

These folks are obviously having a great time on the water this weekend, and families having fun is one of my favorite things to see.

I have to say I've owned a fair number of boats in my life but I never owned one that had a sliding board on it. Since most of the boats I had were in Miami, a sliding board would give an alligator easy access into the boat. And I would never pull a kid behind a boat like that because it looks too much like your trolling for sharks.

But I guess the sliding board could be considered a way humane pirates made you walk the plank.