Saratoga, Wyoming

Beating the Man one Campsite after another.

Free Hot Springs Saratoga

Link

When most people, including myself in years past go camping, they tend not to live in their Travel Trailer as we do.  Preparations before and the work unpacking whatever vessel you happen to be sleeping in ritualistically signals the difference between coming home and the end of Vacation.  While we, on the other hand view the same scenery indoors wherever we land.  Get's to be a little bit weird.  I've looked out of this same door at illegal Hispanics when we were camped so close to the border it could be counted in yards.  To the beautiful Gulf Coast Beaches where we watched Tugs and Tanker Ships cruise by, sometimes withing shouting distance. And now We've been seeing  the Mountains and Rivers in Colorado and Wyoming. The possibility exists that I may get the opportunity to look out on Denali next year.  Or see Orca's in some Alaskan Sound from this same old RV door.  But our television is located just below the Clock like it always is.  And my clothes are in the same overhead Cubby and small Closet. Thanks to Lisa cleaned and washed regularly. So for us, no line exists between coming home and unpacking.   All of our possessions go from one campsite to the next.  (Believe me, certainly enough to take notice whilst trying to get over an eleven thousand foot pass).  

So it's dark, early evening and a pretty strong wind just blew through here cooling us down from out long drive.  Expecting the lows to be about fifty.  We're in a secluded spot several miles from the highway and although we're not alone,  (A couple of other campers)  It's quiet as a mouse out there.  With only one meal today, I was about to crack a little tin of Smoked Oysters.  Then I realized, this may be Bear country.  Worse yet, Grizzly Bear Habitat.  Best to forego the Oysters methinks.  And though I miss the evenings of quiet contemplation of the past two years such as I'm enjoying now, usually while Lisa sleeps and I'm alone.  A more frequent occurrence when we were working in the Oilfields camped out in so many different areas of the Eagle Ford.  But instead, the days, one could argue are limited, are filled with other things.  

Not everyone would enjoy our life.  

People choose their path, even in this lifestyle.  For instance today I chatted with a guy travelling the Country from Dallas.  He's invested a lot of money in a massive "Class A" pulling a late model economy car.  There's no denying their evenings are spent in much more luxurious surroundings.  That is until they step out the door. Packed like Sardines  in the few 50 Amp pull through spots one can find. So he'll gladly pay his fifty bucks a night.  He'd play hell getting here.  Where Lisa carefully calculates the number of wooden blocks under the wheels in order for us to level and stabilize our trailer.  All for the sake of the damn refrigerator that requires a perfectly level platform to operate. We could have pulled right out to the rocky beach of the river. 

Below, an escapee from the nearby pasture.  We notified the people we could.  He was a little upset and beat up.  Soon disappeared in the brush.  Thankfully we are several miles from the highway.  He wasn't about to be captured right away.

Tonight the above pics are taken just a couple of miles out of Saratoga, Wyoming.  Down and dirt road a couple of miles to a beautiful wooded area alongside the North Platte River.  And did I mention it was free.  Compliments of this site Free Camping.  We've only expended about seventy bucks so far on Campsites.  We boondocked for nine days outside Salida, CO.  I'm more than confident that we'll be expending very little on paid camp sites.  We may stay a day or a week.  But tomorrow morning after breakfast, We'll be heading into town for a soak in the free Hot Tubs.  

We just drove from Caspar.  Couple of pleasant days meeting with Lisa's sister Linda, her Niece Summer and family.  Because Lisa forgot to take pictures.  I got into trouble because I took video's of the Cool Dog Australian Shepard "Cornelius" and the Macaw "Eeooo".  Guess I got that right.  She's the people person.  I'm just the "Squirrel" .  So I sputtered out my "yes Dear's and I'm sorrys"  So's not to get into too much trouble.   But Summer and her Husband Jeramiah run a Restaurant at the Golf Course in Caspar.  Here's a link to their Face Book page.   Caddie Shack.   We only had lunch there, but I can vouch the prime rib sandwich was the best I'd ever had.  If you are ever in Caspar, Wyoming. Anyways.  Oh yeah, Cornelius the Dog

We were literally playing catch by the way.  I'm just not good enough to video it.  Cornelius hit the pig so hard that several times it just bounced straight back to my hand.   This video may not work outright and need some work.  I'll get it fixed.

Salida

Yeah, we'd just intended to drive through here on our way to Gunnison.  But about a half hour later and at roughly 9000 feet, if we were gonna get the old girl over the peak, it might be at about five miles per hour with a mile long string of very pissed off people.  The old girl just didn't seem to have the poop.  Didn't help that there were no camp grounds available.  Guess this was the last week of the summer season but what the hell, they knew we were coming.

So we turned around and followed a semi whose brakes were smoking like an old car.  Who knew the Sumbitch was that steep.  

After trolling through the local KOA's and State Parks, where the people are crammed like Sardines, all we could find was this crappy place

Located about thirty yards from the Arkansas River.   Thinking they better not be asking too damn much for this crappy spot.  Luckily we found out it's free.  Located about four and a half miles West of Salida.

Really, as much trouble we're having with the local Varmints.  What's next? Bears.  Silly critters giving us  show of whacking heads together like that.  

Que the music from Jaws.  Since we are perched on a hill, that first step is a bit of a doozy.  About fifteen inches give or take.  But, with my progressive glasses they looked much better and almost normal.  Yeah, that's when I went ass over tea kettle going down those steps.  I kind of wondered if I could still sustain a fall like that.  The answer sadly is no.  Hurt like hell and I'm still sore.  Lisa's take upon coming on to the scene "Hey, you must have taken Judo",  I assured her nothing here happened according to any plan.  Anyway, she tells me she couldn't help because she's just a monitor.  "Looks like you fell" she said.  Anyway

Yeah, I'm getting a little more cautions.  Anyway, we'll be here about a week.  Some more pics.

       So while listening to Crosby Stills Nash and Young on what is really called "Hippy Radio", I'll throw these in as well.

                           Couldn't resist

              What did you think the song was?

Biscotti

       First glimpse of Mountains. Colorado morning from the Walmart in Canon City.

     She said "You had one job, just one job".  "And you couldn't even do that".  That job was getting the Biscotti to the Truck.  Happened yesterday, and damn she's got a memory like an Elephant.  Personally I blame her.  There's just an unwritten law that she's the one responsible for seeing me carry out these hard tasks. I can't do everything.

    Stayed in Austin an absolute pleasant ten days with Carl and Loris.  But couldn't leave.  Yeah, this is what 12 inches of rain looks like  coming down.

        

     Crossing the country eight miles to the gallon, one at a time.  Gonna stay at Walmart's?" Carl and Loris asked.  "Hell No".  "We're going classy time.  Uptown campgrounds with Electricity and everything".  Yeah, second night at the Walmart and now we gotta find a dump station real bad.  But beyond that, fifty two degrees sure beats one oh five.  

Times

    Wrote this a couple of years ago on FB.  Thought it worth repeating


      When I was seventeen and kind of a little turd, I would drive by the Drive In's and see all of the old station wagons with little kids hanging out of them and the Dad in the driver's seat and I would think "Hell on Earth". Twenty years later in the same spot, I thought" How cool is this". But then I would drive by a Trailer Park full of OLD folk and I would think " Waitin to Die". Now after walking darn near seventy five yards to a little trailer after a couple of hours of fishing on the bay watching ships go by I whip up a Martini and sit back and think "How cool is this". Hell yeah I'm up for Pinochle. Times they are a changin.

Just a very sad week

        A very pronounced phenomena one notices getting older is a much deeper, pass on  the word "involvement",  more like immersion in the world around us on a daily basis. Subjectivity, what's good, what's bad POV du jour.  Been like that forever.  Early morning coffee gatherings consisting of "older folk" like myself, swapping lies and opinions.  Now hyper driven by nonstop twenty four hour bombardment of every little detail and nuance of each disaster.

    My ready made opinions and easy fixes have just dried up. Tragedies occur such as Orlando a few weeks back and the one in Dallas a couple of days ago, five dead police officers , twelve shot overall. And more incredibly stupid police executions and a sniper not unlike the Clock Tower Sniper tragedy in Austin several decades ago.  This time cops targeted while assigned to a peaceful BLM protest.  A point of ugly irony is that in a city touted for it's progressive policies, Officers, if the media has it right, talking and joking with protesters. A responsible law enforcement response that should have been the model Ferguson emulated and sounds completely unlike Baton Rouge.

 But force tends to be met with force, violence with violence.  For these cops, probably rightly perceived as good duty.  Extra OT cash and since Dallas habitually responded in this manner, low stress interactions with the community.  Many left their ballistic vests at home.

    Speaking from experience most officers enjoy this kind of interaction.  Lisa as a County Deputy many years ago wandered her jurisdiction and counted the nights by successful coffee dates with locals. Filling me in the next morning about conversations and new ideas about how law enforcement could improve her community.  She was doing community policing long before it became a buzz word. Fit right in with being Scout Leader and other community involvements she used to have.  We'd go to 4th of July parades and be bombarded by greetings from well wishers.

       In my youth and later in college, myself and my friends discussed our interactions with law dogs ( our word not theirs) while growing up. Made for great stories.  Being on the business end of those interactions wasn't always pleasant then either, but certainly a rite of passage.  We knew our local officers by name.  Some we liked some we didn't.  Dependent much upon who'd made us pour our beer individually, one by one on the side of the road.  Or the ones that carted us down to the police station to have our parents pick us up at 2 AM despite all our protests that we were really headed there right now.  A punishment that got one's parents involved.  But we respected the badge and the purpose.

  This was in the day when nearly any responsible father on the block was grandfathered the duty to kick your ass if the need arose. Indeed encouraged.  Just boys of course.   We weren't Angels, nobody really is.  Unlawfulness at that age within reason is really an important stage of development. Irresponsible behavior is far less embarrassing at fifteen than say thirty, the age some from more restricted families decided to finally bloom.  But this tended to be understood by both us and the police.  Consequently their response was always measured, usually appropriate to the offense but almost always involving a bit more pain and humiliation than paperwork  My friend got whacked on the back of the head, grabbed by the shirt collar and given a good old fashioned shake, told to get his ass home and his father was going to hear about it.  It may even have included a kick in the butt.  Like one might see in a Cowboy flick. Or maybe the kick to the butt happened to me in another episode.   Hell I'm  old OK?  Did he get manhandled, hell yeah, but appropriate to the crime of scaring some elderly women sitting in their car while he was jumping up and down on the bumper  in the parking lot following a  baseball game. A nonsensical for the most part harmless impulsive act.  The back of his head smarted a bit, his ego was bruised.  Good old fashioned Corporal punishment.  The elderly ladies I'm sure were satisfied, probably a bit smug with this outcome as well as the officer. The miscreant sent on his way.  No paperwork, no Court and no testimony and more importantly no record.  TCO  My friend, he had a ways to go to get through that phase of life but to the best of my knowledge nothing ever resembled terrorizing elderly ladies by bouncing on their bumper again.  Now I won't mention my friend's name because he and my other cohorts have as many similar unflattering stories about me as well.   But I will mention the Officer.  The former Sgt. Mildon, a guy known as much for the number of jobs he worked raising his family, (Police pay sucked back then) You'd be as likely to see him wearing a clerks apron at SAFEWAY as much as the policeman's uniforms.   He knew my by name because I ran with his little brother umm, who tended to also dabble in mischief.  So that probably wasn't the best thing.

  But myself and hundreds of others seemed to muddle our way through those years in that small town.  Move into adulthood and mostly unfettered choose our path in life.   Those side of the road reprimands became stories providing valuable street cred in later years while trying to jostle ourselves into our place in the world.  So no matter how intimidating Sgt Mildon seemed at the time   when he died from natural causes many years later, a college gymnasium could not house all the people who came to honor him.   Jim wasn't perfect, there exist some who feel they weren't treated fairly by him.    But I suspect proven by the fact I worked a nearly thirty year career the few unpleasant "Corrections" I received from Jim and others until now have been unrecorded anywhere but in the minds of those present.

       What happened? I'm not sure.  But I do know that there are some who do know.  We need our Police and need the security in the knowledge that "Protect and Serve" is not just what's painted on a Car door.

      So I wrote this a few weeks ago.  Much more has happened since but the words I decided worth merit.

     

State Dem Convention

     

On the 16th Lisa and I packed up and headed to San Antonio for the Texas State Democratic Convention.   Lisa became a Delegate a couple of months ago and so reservations were made more than a month ago at the Holiday Inn near the River Walk in the downtown area.  And we were less than a mile from the Alamo Dome.

       Hard lessons learned.  Even though I have regularly walked a couple of hard treadmill miles several times a week at the little AC gym in Rockport, This proved to be little preparation for the heat.  Thursday night we covered a couple of miles downtown to attend a "pre convention" meeting.  The Motel provided free shuttle service to the downtown area but that ended early in the evening.   So we decided to walk back.  The temperature hovered around a hundred the entire day and into the night with the indice up around 110.  Recently turning 62 reminded me all to well my days of being invincible are long over.  My wife who rarely walks for the exercise benefit had to stand by as I just couldn't hack more than a few blocks at a time without stopping to rest.  But then she is a  freak of nature when it comes to the heat.  I've nicknamed her "Demon" given that she also complains of the cold when it sits around 85.     I was completely undone when we got back from that walk and I took the next day off.  


Photoshopped Bernie
  

   Several people made the walk each day in a beautiful park like setting lining the sidewalk for most of the way.  Were the temps more around the seventies, it might have been a little thing I'd have enjoyed immensely.  As it were, I didn't dare and marveled at people in suits, complete with jackets making that walk in the heat. So I'm pretty convinced all Texans are "Demons"  Unbelievable.

    Second lesson, if one has never witnessed politics, doing so at a state convention is an eye opening experience.  From the initial meeting at the Grand Hyatt crammed in a less than accommodating room with a couple of thousand people in order to be schooled on resisting insider tactics.    An example of this is compared to say you buy a Volkswagon.  Now that you are the proud owner of a Volkswagon, seems like almost everyone else is too.  It's the same thing.  Being schooled on a couple of insider tricks.  Like rodents, they turn up everywhere and often.  

       The Amazing thing is:  Texas, like a lot of other Conservative states passed some highly progressive recommendations for the DNC that is occurring in Philly in July.  I'm not giving it up but this link probably answers most questions.  Speaks well for Bernie's folks who stayed and fought back hard.  Hard not to notice that the hardline mainstream weren't getting a bit irked.

      Six hundred bucks for Auto Insurance and that's the cheapest we can find for one old Bronco with two hundred thousand miles on it and a modest 2002 Silverado 2500.  And that's with no wrecks, tickets or underage Drivers.  Oh and that includes a 90's era RV that I also just had to drop 800 bucks on for a new AC.  The little portable we bought to sustain us the Winter couldn't even bring it down to 90 when the temps started rising.  Plus another 450 or so into tires for the tired old Bronco that just keeps huffing away.   Jesus' Kristo how does anyone make it on ten bucks an hour.   Fifteen is going to be hard enough.

     The joke of this is I recall my buddy floated the stupid idea that I might want to work in the private sector of Corrections.  I'd already been laid off my planned second career Airline job so I checked out some job descriptions.  Yeah, for thirteen fitty they wanted a four year degree and five years experience.  That's thirteen fitty an hour folks for a sad sad business that makes their CEO's some high rollers.   No wonder there are a lot of pissed off folks in the world.  As one guy put it "The pitchforks are coming".  I don't think literally but meh....it may be.

  And so with replacing the refrigerator a couple of months ago and the AC this month, I've pretty much come full circle in the little trailer.  I used to sweat what would happen if some of those expensive items went out.  Now I got my answer.  Get the best damn deal you can for a used reefer because y'know damn good and well they don't make them in the dimensions you need and haven't for quite some time.  They want you to buy a new one every two three years.  Then take out the door, knock a couple of holes on either side of it and somehow with the help of Crisco and spit, man and woman noover that sumbitch inside.  And that turned out to be the easy part.  Buuuuut it's been humming away pretty good the last several months.  The AC, buy the sumbitch and hire a guy to stick it in.

   So, yeah done here.  Be talking from the road next month....

Bubba Trump

        Been goin to the Gym three times a week trying to get the BP down.  But every time I'm there on that treadmill pumping my little  legs, right in front of me is a 60" big screen TV.  And for the forty five minutes to an hour I'm on there, I have to digest whatever the channel that it is always set to feeds me. And it's Fox News.  Always Fox News.  So I thought I'd share the nonstop knowledge I've learned from many, many hours planted right in front of ...Fox News.

     There's boiled Trump, Saute'd Trump, BBQ'd Trump.  There's deep fried, stir fried and just plain fried Trump.  You can broil it and bake it.  You can have Trump Kebob, Trump Creole, Trump Gumbo.  There's Pineapple Trump, Coconut Trump, Lemon Trump, Pepper Trump.  You can have Trump Stew, Trump Salad and Trump Soup.   And you get the idea.  Everything is Trump.

    Unless it's Wednesday.   That's what I've learned from Fox News.  Oh, and HRC, she lies, she lies she lies.

     So I might change gyms.  Election coverage, "Trumps" everything else news and I'm a little tired of it.

   Got nearly a foot of rain here.  And we have a permanent lake.  Also Skeeters the size of Hawks.  

    On FB couple of guys I've known since High school got married, by the Supreme Court Administrative Judge. Gave them a congratulations.  There's hope for Idaho yet.

     Noises have been made for months, but it just never came together.  Until yesterday,  Lloyd and I made a date to go fishing in the Bay in his rather awesome boat.   Weather was beautiful and Hard hard heads were plentiful.  Even caught a few crabs dangling in the air refusing to let go getting every little chomp on that piece of mullet they could get.  Creepy feeling what happens to people lost at sea.  It ain't the sharks, it's the crabs.  

     The Harbor has some intricacies to navigate which I appreciated Lloyd's explanations for.  The biggest risk is watching the Tides.  Some areas are only inches deep.  For that matter none of it gets more than a few feet deep.  Deep enough for a couple of eight foot Bull sharks Lloyd said he's seen out there.  One was caught.   But navigating the several small islands in the bay I was impressed how pretty the water and the small beaches are.  He promised if we can catch a decent day, he's confident we can do some some offshore fishing.  Lloyd said he's been out about ten miles before.

     Couple of boys here are slowly acclimating to life.  Speaking for myself.  Even it the heat, on a good day a drive to wherever is usually along the bay.  An extremely pleasant experience with the smell of salt water, gentle Ocean breeze and sparse traffic.  Maybe take a ferry ride where there's always Dolphins to watch along the way.  A huge Tanker might cruise by reminding me how small I am compared to the things man builds . I wish I'd settled roots here thirty or so years ago as I suspect they will.  

    Reservations made for the Democratic Convention in San Antonio on the 16th.  Should be fun.  Lisa is a little stressed about the details.  With one candidate about to drop  out, I'm curious how this will all turn out.

     It's going to be a beautiful albeit hot, steamy and skeetery day.  Orvwah.