Been kind of "out of pocket" for a few days.
We've been layin' 'round Mesa Verde for a few days... almost a week I guess. The FREE National Park week has little impact for us, since we get that every day ;) but the FREE CAMPGROUND worked for us!
The only down side was almost zero cell signal inside the park boundaries, so I've been fairly blocked from doin' any online work. Good and bad. It's not a bad thing to Step Away once in a while and catch your breath.
But, when a fella gets solidly hooked into makin' his living by way of Internet Smoke Signals... it's kinda tough to just have it ripped away for a while, cold turkey! Withdrawal is a painful thing!
It also keeps me from using my high tech ways of searching out a new camp.
This time of year in Colorado, finding a camp can be a lil' dicey. The Forest Service, having given away most all of its campgrounds to private interests, locks up those campgrounds in the off season. If the corporation can't make a dime off the public, the public is blocked from use of its OWN property.
That's compounded in the springtime by the weather. You've got to be a lil' careful, pulling back into high country in April and May... and make sure you've got fuel, water and groceries... You just might find yourself locked in camp for a bit if a late winter storm comes rippin' through...
... Ala Last year over in Flaming Gorge Recreation Area, when we had a foot of snow on Memorial Day! ;)
So, without any signal, I reverted to our "old" methods of finding a camp. Using the Delorme atlas and our four... weathered and worn eyes, we spotted a NF road on our way into Durango for a Pizza supper...
... on our way Home to the rig with our current front yard being Mesa Verde... we took a short look-see up that road and found RV Boondocking Heaven! and strong 3G signal for us 21st century, high tech boondocking drifters too! HooYa!
Just a mile and a bit up that road is a small selection of Prime camps... most with a shining view of the snow capped peaks to the North.
We'll move there in the morning. I'm sitting in the truck bangin' out this post while Miss Heidi is in the Cortez Walmart, makin' sure we got the groceries to ride out a late winter storm at just about 9,000 feet altitude... should one come whippin' in on us! ;)
The last few days that I've had to "step away" seem to have proved profitable too... hiking/walking through the ruins ponied up with time away from keyboards to think... has me generating what I've taken to be some genuine inspiration.
Having hit a bit of a blind trail on book number three I stumbled upon the answer and that's now ready to take off a runnin' over the next couple weeks! :) I've got a few new website pages planned out and ready to whittle...
... and what looks to be the Final (Heidi can only hope) evolution of our rig refit has gotten sketched out.
Then... to make things shine a lil' bit... Google, this past week just put out an update to their system. For a lot of people it seems to have really busted their website traffic and caused a lot of pain and distress. A few emails on the subject managed to come through to my phone... but I couldn't read anything till I came in to the Wally world parking lot! ....
First thing I did was pull up my website analysis pages... to see how bad my traffic had been affected by the effort of google to deal with webscam "Stuff"... only to find that my traffic is the highest it's ever been since the update rollout! HooYa! :)
One more time doing "It" the way SBI taught me to has paid off! Suh-Wheet!
Well... the groceries are loaded and it's time to head back to our internet-less camp... with our next good camp I'll be able to catch up on our wanderings and such of the past week or so...
The Word Whittling Wandering Cowboy Biker Keeps on Rolling
Brian
A broken down Ol' Cowboy goin' RV Boondocking ...
...and Yondering, to the beat of a different Biker Cowboy Drummer
4 comments:
That sooooo "Ticks" me off that they put gates up on our campgrounds and lock us out...Then in the Fall they close down loops one at a time..Even if they are the best one's in the C.G..
Grrrrrr...
Upriverdavid
Hi Brian and Heidi, We would like to get one of those handy maps. I looked on Amazon and some of the comments were pretty negative for the Delorme. We are thinking of going with the Benchmark instead. What are your thoughts on the Delorme. Have you ever been steered incorrectly by it? Thanks for you help, Grace
Really? What were the criticisms? I see people complain about GPS too... After they pull their rigs into holes they can't get out of, because "The GPS said"
I use the state map... Then Delorme... Then Google maps... Then... I use common sense and walk the track before I just pull in. You can't just blindly trust ANY technology.
Have had any trouble that way. The multiple "layers" generally corrects any faults of any one system. It then in the end, my judgement has final responsibility! :)
Thanks for your quick response, Brian.
Once we start doing this full-time, we'll have some sort of internet. Now, it's just weekend stuff so we don't have any way of connecting. We don't have smart phones.
The comments I saw on Amazon were just that the Delorme showed a road that wasn't there or that the road ended but it didn't show that on the map.
The complaints on the Benchmark is that the scale is too small. How's the scale of the Delorme?
Yes, your way would be foolproof if we took the 4-wheel drive toad in first. Thanks for your help!
Grace
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