This is a two days in one blog post. I'm trying to catch up.

If you click the pics you will be magically transported to the Colorado Rockies.   That's highly unlikely but you can increase your chances by drinking heavily.

My lovely boondocking spot at Black Canyon of the Gunnison national Park. Pretty much all the boondocking spots look like this. I guess parking this close to the road works okay when you set up your tent in the bushes somewhere, but it doesn't work well when people are driving past you 3 feet from your window.  I'm sure the hookup sites are nicer but they were all full.

I drove to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, which is where I'm camped at the moment. Since I didn't have any reservations, I found out they put people like me in the loop "C." That loop is apparently for wandering bums that don't have the sense or the money to make a reservation at one of their hookup sites. After using my campsite for a while, I've rated it "barely tolerable" on my campsite recommendations scale. I would tell you all the things wrong with it, but I have neither the time the patience or the ability to know where to start.

As much as I don't like making reservations for campgrounds, if I want to stay at a Colorado State Park, there's no way around it. You can't register at the State Park. You have to do it over the phone or on the Internet. Today, I had to register over the phone at Ridgway state Park while sitting in my truck at the State Park entrance.

I wanted to stay here for two nights, but they only had tonight available, so I modified my intentions slightly. I will do some more sightseeing in the morning and leave for Mesa Verde National Park after lunch and try to stay at their campground till after the weekend, so it will be easier for me to find places to camp on the weekdays... It certainly can't be any worse.

I've gotten myself into a weird timing situation where I haven't had any Internet for two days. Plus, I have too many pictures of my first day of travel to put on one blog post. And I'm not going to be doing any sightseeing and picture taking of the National Park until tomorrow morning. This means my pictures are going to end up on a wrong day, or I've got to put a whole bunch of pictures on one blog post and slow down everybody's computer... What to do? What to do?

Okay, that was easy, I just made up my mind what to do. I'm going to put a few of the pictures I take during the day on the blog, and I will save the rest to put on the blog when I get back to Denver and don't have anything to take pictures of. The reason I think that will work is my photos usually don't have anything to do with what I'm writing on the blog anyway. Having travel pictures on the blog while I'm living in Denver will help me find things to blog about during my boring, humdrum, daily life.


                                 theboondork

The smoke from the forest fires wasn't too bad at sunrise it just settled into the mountain valleys and into the Canyon.

The Overlook at the visitor center.

Because of all the smoke I couldn't get a decent picture down in the Canyon. At least the smoke is giving me something to blame my pictures on, I'll probably continue using that even after the smoke is gone.

These next three pictures are from Ridgway Colorado. And I went there just to see where parts of the movie "True Grit" starring John Wayne was filmed. This building was in one of the scenes.

This was main Street in the movie and appeared in several scenes.

This is the wagon that John Wayne hauled his prisoners to jail in the movie. There was more places I wanted to see that I purposely didn't go to just to give me an excuse to come back to Ridgway again. I know that sounds weird, but I like having a reason to go someplace instead of just being there.