Strolling Amok

Pops goes on tour.

20 Sep 2017
3 Comments

Problems vs. Opportunities

I received the missive below  from a good friend of mine, who happens to instruct art classes at a local college. As an admirable artist, teacher and person, now and then he gets an inspiration to get creative with problems. In this case, fashionable school policy prohibits the possession of a recyclable water bottle on school property, so reusable water bottles abound and are frequently mislaid. Thing is, not one person in this class has ever reclaimed theirs. That’s odd, because commercial water bottles can get pretty pricey if you don’t want your water to leak and taste like plastic, so my friend has not yet found an alternative to adding them to the waste stream – other than relabeling his little lost & found display collection as…

“Dear friend,

“In the future, examples of lost, misplaced and recovered water bottles
will be used to determine dynasties and earth ages of forgotten
civilizations and generations.

“Unearthed pottery shards and extinguished campfires are uninteresting and
commonplace.

“Oakton Community College is proud to announce the first museum-level
collection and overview of this kind.

“Subscribe now and receive minute-by-minute updates as to how this dynamic
new field of anthropology develops!”

Posted in Miscellania, Navel Gazing and tagged
18 Sep 2017
5 Comments

Out for a Walk

A good part of the slope down here where I’m standing is solid rock.

The glorified name for this post is a photo essay, but really, it’s just a bunch of snaps I took as I walked a half mile further down, and returned to camp. The walk at the trailhead is fine, but passing vehicles made me wonder what was down there. My camp is at a spot that’s difficult enough and sloped enough to slow down even ATVers out for the weekend. After a day or two here, I noticed that I was seeing some vehicles going one way or the other and not returning, indicating that my trail connected to something meaningful at both ends, and so was not a dead end spur. A look at an MVUM showed that it does indeed connect and, if passable by my rig, would be a shorter overall route to resupply at Buena Vista.

The small amount of passing traffic is not the nuisance it usually is elsewhere. If I were to perch out by the road clear of the bushes, there would be entertainment value in Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life and tagged ,
16 Sep 2017
2 Comments

My Favorite Advertisements?

Hey kids, do you wonder why Grandpa or Grandma is so screwed up? It’s because of ads like this from the Soda Pop Board of America. Read that copy!! Not surprisingly, that’s a reversed image of a Coca-Cola bottle.

[Caution: this is one of those posts that started small and, well, just got out of hand as I began mulling over things. Enjoy. Or not.]

This is a peculiar post, because I am weary of ads. Ads are all you now see on TV, online, by the road, and in printed material. We’re inundated by the stuff, so now ad men are advertising in a “viral” way so that it appears to not be what it is. So, it takes some effort for me to think back and ask myself, “What ads have I actually enjoyed?” There aren’t many.

The first is a whole series put out by the Doyle Dane Bernbach firm for Volkswagen in the 1960s, when the task was to market a car designed in the 1930s, a “people’s car” to highlight progress from the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party in the Fatherland. It was an antediluvian copy of an existing Tatra model, but it was still well thought out for what it was in that era, and it was inordinately tough. The Beetle was small and homely, and once it was timidly pushed into the market in an era when “longer, lower, wider” prestige were what sold, it was bought only by a few minimalist nonconformists seeking relief from the fins, chrome, and tonnage. What did the mainstream market look like? Like this:

The new 1960 Pontiac!

Or this: Read more…

Posted in Miscellania and tagged , , , ,
15 Sep 2017
4 Comments

Lenhardy Cutoff

The view from my first camping spot. Not too shabby!

When I decided to vacate the premises along Peru Creek Road near Dillon, Colorado, I had it in mind to head south and drop elevation, if possible. That was for both temperature and health effects reasons. I have plenty of 10,000-foot campsite on my Travel Itinerary, but elevation is not one of those things that are noted on some “find a campsite” websites. To get lower meant that I’d have to forego Leadville, which is a primo town with a few camping possibilities, but at the same elevation.  All along the trip down I was impressed by the number of side roads marked as reaching one mountain peak or another, all of them exceeding 14,000 feet. My earlier errands in Frisco had taken way too long, owing to destination location errors in both my GPS and iPhone nav system, and the absolutely congested “five pounds in a three-pound bag” nature of touristy and uber-stylish Frisco itself. No worries though – the Hollywood carrier and Evelo e-bike up front tend to act as a cow-catcher for pedestrians.

I settled on a mystery stop further south called Arkansas River, just north of Buena Vista. Buena Vista itself is at 7,943′ elevation, and this BLM campsite is just a very few miles away. How bad could it be? I’d followed the Arkansas River beside the highway for much of the trip down, and there are many vantage points for Read more…

Posted in Campsites and tagged ,
14 Sep 2017
2 Comments

Peru Creek Climb

Out for a foot-drag at 10,000 feet elevation, this is the view!

This post is a follow-up to the initial one on the Peru Creek camping area near Dillon, Colorado. Because of a problematic cellular signal, the only way to do that was to leave there. Not a unique situation in Colorado. But ahhh, the scenery as you drive along!

This very rough trailhead is officially adaptable for vehicles as well as people and mountain bikes. As I walked past, this Toyota SUV that had money poured into it gave it a go. It returned maybe a half-hour later, while a stock Jeep that preceded it stayed in for quite a while. I could not handle the climb rate on foot, so I could not gauge the degree of mechanical challenge. Some big rocks at center maybe a hundred feet in promised some adventure, however.

A low temperature front about to move in just as supplies were starting to run low made it a Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Tourista! and tagged
11 Sep 2017
8 Comments

Heading for Peru Creek

The current view out my “kitchen” window as I prepped my morning coffee. Not difficult to adapt to, in my opinion!

When leaving Wheatland, Wyoming for Dillon, Colorado, the fastest and shortest route was to take the Interstate to and through Denver. Considering that I poke along at a mere 65 MPH instead of the 70-80 MPH limit, that limits the theoretical time advantage of such a route. Having in the past swung into battle in Denver with the Defiant travel trailer, I decided that the more pleasant option was to instead add just a few miles and take a two-lane to Laramie, Wyoming in order to better take in the sights onroute. From there, more two-lane would take me to Dillon, Colorado. That worked out wonderfully.

Southern Wyoming is a treat. On long, lonely stretches that connect ranch entrances to the nearest distant town, I passed two pickups by the side of the road and two ranchers dressed in Western gear standing at the bed of one truck. By his arm gestures, one seemed to be describing something to the other as they conversed. Time to catch up on stories. A large wildlife area came up as I went on, and with it low mountains that the road twisted to stay between. These mountains were rugged and had an odd sandpaper surface, along with a deep tan color that through my amber sunglasses looked chocolate brown. I should have Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Travelin' Man and tagged ,
08 Sep 2017
3 Comments

The Nature of God – Part 10

[If you are just now stumbling onto this post without having read the various parts in this series from the beginning, I strongly urge you to go back to the start and continue on from there through each successive post. None of these individual entries stand on their own, and you may wind up with little but confusion and unanswered questions by starting here. That is easily done by entering “The Nature of God” in the search box on the home page, which will list links to all available parts.]

The next long segment of my life was a couple of decades of turmoil, most of which was simply the playing out of my having made some very poor decisions early on, truth to tell. Well intentioned, but poor. Some mistakes create instant results that are quickly over and done with, while some slowly well and continue their payback for life.

My relationship with God was a weird mix of intimacy and distance. I just couldn’t seem to get the hang of receiving the kind of daily inward guidance that the Bible seems to suggest, at least not as I pictured it. But as I read, some content would always stand out as if it were written especially for me, or I would begin to understand the hands-on applicable meaning of things which had been irrelevant stumpers before. Sure, sometimes I’d read and wonder, “Why is this in here?” Yet, the culture and attitudes of the people in those early times and places stood out as so different that I would then begin to wonder, “Why would they feel the need to do that?” They were a pretty rough crowd, always complaining and always angling for the take in some form or other. I couldn’t help but look down on them at times, since they seemed locked in never-ending cycles of futile New Year’s resolutions and grudging promises to abide by an agreement, leading to reneging on them and trying hard not to get caught while doing so. Lip service. Where was the sense of personal integrity here? It was much more like the fleshing out of “what’s in it for me?”

I got pretty snooty about it, over time. I felt that I may have my faults, but at least I wasn’t as bad as them. How they chose to live their lives had no relevance to me. Trouble was, I kept Read more…

Posted in The Nature of God and tagged
06 Sep 2017
12 Comments

Lewis Park, Wheatland Wyoming

Resting at the end of a long day.

First, some tedious detail. After completing the first day’s errands and overnighting at Cabela’s in Rapid City, South Dakota, I got a second day’s errands done by 1 PM. That included a much needed haircut so I would stop scaring small children.

I’ve also been dressing a little better since yesterday, and chucked my oldest pair of jeans that were beginning to get wear holes in them. Why? At the start of day one, on my way into Rapid City from Hanna Campground, I stopped at a restaurant-slash-tourist-trap for breakfast due to having run out of my own stuff. It’s a decent place, kind of rustic, always busy, and the food is good. I read an ebook from Project Gutenberg as I ate, and some time after I finished, the waitress showed up and said that my tab had already been paid. Huh? Yep, paid by Read more…

Posted in Campsites and tagged ,
30 Aug 2017
3 Comments

Life is Hard Dept.

Hanna Campground in the Black Hills National Forest.

[I’ve found that I can get a marginal cell signal at points during the day, so after enough unsuccessful tries, I was able to assemble and publish this.]

Can life be hard? It most surely can. But this is certainly not one of those times. Open only from Memorial Day through one week after Labor Day (for RVs, anyway), Hanna Campground is run by a concessionaire for the Forest Service. Normally $18/night to stay plus $2 for each yapping mutt on board, an America the Beautiful Pass chops this rate down to a base of $9/night. I can hack that for a week. A very tenuous cellular signal is the only reason I can think of why Hanna Campground is cheaper than the others in the general area. It’s very highly rated, and there’s a reason for that. I’ll let you figure that out from Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life and tagged ,
28 Aug 2017
8 Comments

Spearfish Trail Exploration

Overlooking Spearfish, SD from many miles away.

This is mainly a video post, and the video presented is not for entertainment purposes since, if it were, it would be just 5-8 minutes long. Instead, it’s a punishing 42 minutes in length – all of it dashcam – which means that few will watch it all the way through. That’s okay. What this is for is to show anyone who is interested just what I typically do to hunt for undocumented boondocking campsites along relatively easy trails that do not require 4WD. (Token high clearance is needed here.) This particular hunt is unusual because it happens to be quite successful. Two campsites on two trails, and not all that far from each other!

Why bother watching? Well, if you live vicariously through this blog and dream of getting out there to the kinds of places I do, this video may kick an assumption or two out of place. It might make you want to stick to published and popular campsites, or to RV parks. Or it may add to your wanderlust – I don’t know.  I find the ever-changing scenery quite Read more…

Posted in Campsites, Daily Life, The Intrepid and tagged , ,

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