More personal opinion on the commercial campground situation.

Clicking the pics is an act of defiance, telling the world you won't stand for teeny tiny pictures.

Narrow gauge train Fairplay Colorado.

Continuing yesterday's thought about my opinion of the current campground situation. One of the things that usually happens when a product, be it a loaf of bread or a campsite, is in short supply, entrepreneurs step in and produce more of that product if possible. That's why I mentioned yesterday the campground owners might try to prevent that from happening with local rules and regulations, which is easier to do than you might think, when the Campground Owners Association is lobbying the local city Council and, there's no one representing RVers that pass through town looking for a reasonably priced place to spend the night.

Another thing that you could safely predict is large companies coming in and buying up lots of mom-and-pop campgrounds and turning them into something like the KOA. This strategy is great for business because they can keep the prices high in the areas they control, and all the customer gets out of it is campgrounds being reasonably consistent from one place to another and getting used to paying extraordinarily high camping rates to experience that familiarity.

It might not take much persuading to get a big company like Camping World to buy up a bunch of campgrounds just like they bought up a whole passel of RV dealers in the past to control RV prices in the area. It wouldn't take long before they could have entire States where $75 a night is the standard camping fee. Of course, there would have to be extra Fees for your dog, your wife, the Motorcycle hanging on the back of your trailer, if you want to dump your tanks, Internet use, cable use, electric use, the size of your RV, etc. etc. And Before you know it, these Millennials that are just getting involved in RVing will think $100 a night for a campsite is perfectly normal and acceptable. And the handful of mom-and-pop campgrounds that are left are perfectly happy because they can now charge folks $50 a night and feel they're giving them a bargain.

Now I don't know if any of this will happen. All I know is we're on a course that could allow this to happen because it's simply a matter of supply and demand. And right now demand for campsites is rapidly exceeding the supply of campsites, and that does not bode well for RVers.

As RVers, there's not much we can do except what I'm doing, which is refusing to participate, and I'll talk about that tomorrow.

                                 theboondork

Old farmhouse in Colorado.

The smoky view I was getting from the top of the Mesa that the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings are on.

Taylor reservoir dam near Tincup Colorado.