my mini-vacation is only 12 days away

clicking a pic is a right not a privilege. So use your First Amendment right to free speech and show the world you have the right to click a pic no matter how underexposed, drab and bereft of purpose it may be.

Random left over pictures from my last mini-vacation. apparently I'm badly in need of another mini-vacation because my picture supply has dwindled down to almost nothing.

Another beautiful day in Colorado. I love these days leading up to Fall; the temperatures are just about perfect, some of the trees have a few yellow leaves, and a few folks who can't wait to decorate already have up their scary Halloween adornments.

I, of course, am far too lazy to decorate the Lance and truck to look like a hearse rolling down the road, although if the Lance was a black as my truck I might consider it. But if I did that, I would also have to store Christmas decorations, Thanksgiving decorations, and New Year's decorations somewhere in the Lance, and there's simply not enough room.

So I forgo any holiday trappings and maintain the same boring look of an inexpensive Lance camper precariously perched in the bed of a rather decrepit GMC pickup truck, which, by the way, does get me noticed, but not as someone that enjoys holidays, but as a semi-homeless bum that hasn't gotten around to stealing a grocery cart from Walmart to put all my belongings in.....yet.  But come to think of it, having a grocery cart would more than double the storage capacity in the Lance.

But I don't mind my deceiving looks which is often mistaken for someone that lives on the sidewalk, because all sorts of law enforcement officers see me and figure I haven't got enough money to pay for a jay-walking ticket so they tend to leave me alone.

The best part of Fall has yet to come, which will be all the leaves changing and having to break out my fleece jacket to use in the mornings and afternoons when temperatures get decidedly chilly. But that's good sleeping weather, so it doesn't bother me that the nighttime will require a blanket or two in another couple of weeks.

When that kind of weather change comes along, it puts me in the mood to take a mini-vacation down to southern Colorado to watch the Sandhill Cranes pause their migration for a few weeks on their trip down to New Mexico and southern Arizona, where they, and I, will spend the winter for opposite reasons, the cranes to put on weight during the winter. And me to lose all the extra weight I've gained while being well fed in Denver.

Theboondork

The old and the new.

A modern streetlight probably made by a machine somewhere in China.

The old building. Made by talented craftsmen that took their trade seriously,  built a building designed to last for generations, and the owner could be proud of .

Antique snowblower that struggled mightily to keep the snow off of Colorado's 11,000 foot Monarch Pass.

No power steering, no power brakes, no power anything. What power there was  being supplied by a fearless dedicated operator that worked for low pay, on  high roads, with steep drop-offs. Giant boulders hidden by snow, and very few road guards to keep him from going over the edge.

But the folks have to get to the grocery store, and the kids have to get to school....life in the mountains was tough.