Occupation of Independence

Hmmm....it looks like thermal collapse in a couple days in southern Colorado. Here I go again. After 15 years of full time RVing there is still a nervous drama to. I still feel anxiety about the fall migration, so much so in fact that it's a bit embarrassing. Or is it? Although I can't really explain it, it seems that I must be doing something right if I still have strong feelings about the migration, after all these years.  But why do I only get emotional about the autumn migration, and not the spring migration? You'd think that it would be symmetric. But there is something that I can explain: it is important to resist hitch-itch in migrating too far south too fast. It's not that the warmer desert locations aren't appealing. I like them well enough. But in migrating south, imagine pouring yourself and your rig into a conical funnel whose downstream tip is at Yuma, AZ. As you proceed "downstream", North America keeps shrinking. Your options become fe

Del Norte, CO. Considering what public land management has become these days, you have to envy the crony capitalist who gets the government contract for signage. This was the first time I ever saw a sign like this. A list of Do-s and Don'ts is on the bottom, too small to read in the photo. So we were cautious on our first mountain bike ride on the open range out here. But there was no sign of sheep or "livestock protection" dogs. Perhaps it's the wrong time of year. How grand it would be to run across a Basque shepherd and learn a little about the grazing racket. (So far, I'm only familiar with grazing at Costco on "open range Saturdays.") Better yet, I'd like to ride over a ridge, look across a sagebrush flat to a ridge on the other side, and see a white Great Pyrenees dog protecting his charge against the depredations of coyote, wolf, and cougar.

"Tawniness" is the perfect camouflage on BLM land, and yet the beast's tawny color was so bright in the morning light that I could see him more than a half mile away. The bright tawniness doesn't come through in the photograph, but let's hope the reader won't claim that he can't see the mountain lion in the photograph: its ears erect and alert, waiting and warming in the morning sun, perching on a ridge, ready to leap down on its unsuspecting prey and grab its neck. Soon this mountain biker would be on the trail right in front of nature's most magnificent predator, and below him.    But as it turned out, the morning was a little less disastrous than all of that. Nature's most magnificent predator turned out to be a broken tree, with prongs that made it look like ears. I claimed to be disappointed. How silly! This is what happens when you read Jack London's White Fang the night before an outing. Early in White Fang's puppyhood h

Saguache/Del Norte, CO. In the upper left quadrant of this photo you can see a white speck. It is my van and travel trailer, camping alone with excellent Verizon service. The photo was taken from one of the dirt roads/two tracks that make for excellent mountain biking in the public lands near Saguache. Why should I camp alone, instead of sharing it with other campers that I have something in common with? I don't expect them to be mountain bikers, of course. Most people can be interesting about some topic or activity.  In fact I rolled into a parking area in a special recreation site near Del Norte CO, and quickly told the camper who was already there not to worry about having his little sanctuary invaded, because I just wanted his opinion on any special dispersed camping restrictions there. I did end up camping next to them and it was great. They had a pickup camper that pulled a small utility trailer. When he told me that he even helped a buddy turn a utility cargo trailer