A reader recently asked me why I haven't put a monthly expense post on my blog lately, and the answer is fairly simple. Living in my daughter's driveway for the summer like I do would in no way relate to anyone else's normal full-time RVing expenses. And therefore wouldn't be of any benefit to anyone trying to determine what it cost to live full-time in an RV.

In the summer my expenses vary wildly. I tend to buy more things from Amazon than I do the rest of the year because in Denver Amazon delivers multiple times a day so I can get things very quickly, sometimes almost as quick as driving to the store and buying it.

My grocery expenses are nowhere near normal because I frequently eat at my daughter's house, where healthier food is prepared, and its free.

If I need any medical things done, like new glasses, or a checkup, I wait until summer and do that when I'm in Denver. Denver being a big city gives me far more options than the small towns I prefer to be in during the winter. And since some of those expenses are covered by Medicare, which is the only insurance I have, they probably wouldn't relate to anyone considering full-timing either.

And of course I have the expenses of my mini-vacations which I imagine wouldn't apply to anyone else's full-time lifestyle.

So all things considered I try to give folks monthly expenses that would apply to the average full timer that boondocks a lot, and my summer expenses, I believe, are too far out of the fulltimer norm to be of use to anyone.

                           theboondork

I did a little laundry in the house this morning, while the grandkids, mom dad, and the dog went to some kind of river picnic area so the kids can splash in the water and catch some frogs. You have to be pretty serious about wanting to get in the water around here because all the water in this area available to swim or splash in comes right out of the mountains, and since it moves rather quickly it doesn't have much chance to warm up so when it gets to Denver its just a wee bit shy of being ice water.

I've been giving some thought to my next mini-vacation and where and when it should be. I wanted to visit the headwaters of the Rio Grande which is way down in southern Colorado which is kind of a long drive for a one week mini-vacation. I also wanted to revisit Rocky Mountain national Park and get some pictures when it wasn't covered in smoke from various forest fires, and a week or so is just about perfect for a mini-vacation like that.

Visiting Rocky Mount National Park when the leaves are changing would be fantastic and that will start happening sometime around the middle of September. The problem is everybody knows that and the place will be packed.

Unfortunately that's the way it will be all over the Colorado high country starting around the middle of September so crowds will be hard to avoid. The biggest problem is finding a place to stay. The state and federal parks in the mountains will be full to overflowing, and the commercial RV parks are probably already booked up. So maybe I can dig deeply into my boondocking bag of tricks and find some out-of-the-way places where I can boondock in peace. I somehow managed to do that this summer even though almost every place I went was crowded maybe I can do it again this fall.

One problem that's hanging things up at the moment is my accountant is working on my business taxes which have to be signed and emailed by the extension deadline date of September 16, and I need to be around to sign them so the accountant can e-file them before the deadline and so far nobody knows when they will be finished.

The IRS is one of the few remaining things in my life that I have no control over and have to abide by their arbitrary dates and rules which impacts my freedom to live life the way I choose. Woodrow Wilson is the father of the IRS as we know it, and I say a pox on him and the horse he rode in on.

                           theboondork

It's getting back into the low to mid 90s again which are temperatures that I was hoping were gone for this summer, but apparently summer is going to hang on a while longer.

Sometimes when this happens in Colorado and seasons drag on longer than they should, instead of having a gradual transition the change can be rather abrupt, and you find that yesterday was Summer and today is Fall with some snow in the forecast. I think with all the heat we've been having this summer I would enjoy some chilly weather in the forecast.

Now I could go hang out in the mountains somewhere, the weather is rather nice anywhere above 10,000 feet, but that would take me away from the grandkids, and my minivacations have already taken me away from the grandkids a lot, and since I live in their yard I get used to seeing them every day.

I still don't know what I'm going to do this winter but I was giving some thought to when I leave Denver I would head West towards the Las Vegas Nevada area. I'm not a big fan of all the crowds and problems of dealing with Las Vegas anymore, but I was thinking that maybe hanging around the lake Mead area until it got too cold that far north, and then heading farther South.

I don't know, and probably won't know until the day I leave since I'm not very good at making decisions, and totally against making plans that interfere with my ability to "stop and smell the roses", or "carpe diem". It's pretty hard to "carpe your diem" when you absolutely, positively, have to be somewhere by 2 o'clock, so I try to avoid scenarios that put me in that situation.

                          theboondork