Vacation(?)

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I couldn’t wait to get away. I felt I really needed it. Camping. Living for a week in nature. Where everything makes perfect sense to me. I was feeling pretty over-full of dealing with other humans, especially the mass of humanity from all over the country that has decided to vacation in (clog up) Colorado.

Yes, the pandemic has made it the year of the road trip. I went to REI to get some freeze dried meals and a flashlight, and after I waited in line to enter, the shelves were nearly bare. Everybody’s going camping this year. I began to have doubts I’d be able to escape civilization as much as I wanted.

I didn’t have a specific plan for this trip, only some general ideas. I packed and prepared for most anything.

The first 24 hours were nearly bliss. I ended up in northern New Mexico, near the old steam train tracks for the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad. I hadn’t been in that area for 8 years. It was only to be a stop on the way to the Weminuche Wilderness near Durango. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky which was perfect for getting some photos of comet NEOWISE, which was fading more with each passing night.

Grassy Hill

I parked the car and backpacked my camping gear up to the top of a grassy hill where I would have a nearly unobstructed view of the sky all around. I got some pretty good photos, but Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites were getting in the way.

Comet Neowise. I walked over to the trees so there would be some perspective. Click for larger.
Comet Neowise with SpaceX Starlink satellite going through the photo (thin line). Click for larger.

I watched directly overhead as a straight line of them passed, one following exactly the same distance from another. And this is with only 450 of them launched. The final total is supposed to be 12,000? What’s the night sky going to look like in a few years?

That night I slept better than I had in a long time, and usually when I’m camping I don’t sleep well.

I decided there must have been an alcoholic cowboy managing herds of cows in the area back in the 1960’s and 1970’s. There were all of these old beer cans from before they had the permanently affixed pull tabs, They were imprinted with Do Not Litter, which was a 70’s campaign. I’d see them where ever I went, even if only to take a pee.

Please Don’t Litter

My scheme was to get an early start and head to Durango. But, it was so quiet and calm with so few people around, I decided to linger another day. “Let’s photograph the train when it comes around.”

Train video. 11 minutes. Best to view on a larger screen. Click the 4 arrows in the lower right to go full screen. Shot with phone.

Shortly after the train left I decided to explore some of the area I hadn’t before. I headed down the 4×4 road to Rio de Los Pinos. I thought maybe I’d be able to head up-canyon to the Toltec Gorge. No such luck going up-canyon. There was a gate with private property signs. Down canyon there was lush and verdant growth along the river. It was quiet there too. Only a few campers. Perhaps because it was raining, I decided to head back up to the drier views of the chaparral and ponderosa.

Chippy

When driving on 4×4 roads, there are a lot of rattles in the 18-year old XTerra. But this time there was a rattle that didn’t belong. After thinking about what it could be, I decided to ignore it for the time being. But then a smallish rock which should have easily passed under my car, didn’t. That’s weird. So I stopped and had a look.

Broken shock absorber

A broken shock absorber that I had only installed 18 months earlier. A Monroe shock absorber. After looking at the weld where it broke, I concluded it was a piece of shit. Don’t buy Monroe. So what did I end up doing? I bought Monroe because nobody had any stock of anything else.

That was the end of the good part of the trip.

I headed home the next morning to repair the car. There were a lot of factors in the decision, a primary one being I didn’t want to spend a night in a motel while a more local repair shop did the repair. I could do it myself the same day, and then sleep in my own bed. Which I did.

Headed out the next morning to continue the trip, but with the distance back to southern Colorado, decided to stay within a few hours of home. I headed over to the Grand Valley area on the other side of the divide.

Ugh… more problems

The mass of humanity that I was trying to escape was over there. I headed to the Devil’s Thumb Park trailhead. It was packed. But I didn’t see any backpackers; all day-hikers. I figured it would clear out by evening. So I geared up for a day-hike intending to come back in the evening for the backpack of camping gear.

The hike was unpleasant. Everybody I encountered on the trail was bickering with their spouse or other family members. After a couple of miles I headed back to the trailhead. I encountered a quiet pond with water beetles in it and decided to head up the canyon beyond it. There was no trail, but it was just what I needed. Instead of bickering humans, I saw wildflowers and heard birds, both of which were lacking on the previous trail. The going was slow but I was in the moment. The best kind of hike.

By the time I got back to the trailhead, I was literally exhausted and it was dark steady rain. There was no way I would have carried my camping gear back up the trail. I thought about camping at the trailhead, but there was already someone doing that. Plus the trailhead stunk from so many people using the bushes as a bathroom. I made dinner and felt better after eating. I decided to find a place to car camp, but as I searched, every available place was full. I decided to head back home. It is not the year to go camping.

It turned out that most of the campgrounds in the valley were closed, as were some of the main forest service roads. It forced a lot of people into the area I was in.

Hopefully better luck next time.

Touchstones

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Sometimes I just want things to be static and unchanging. During this crazy time of wearing masks, waiting in line to enter the grocery store and being more anti-social than usual, I find it comforting to get out into nature and visit the unchanging landscapes. Well, I should state that the landscapes are always changing, but in small, natural ways.

Frog pond

 

I went out this week and hiked the Odyssey trail (my own name for it since it doesn’t have an official name).  I was expecting small changes.  I was curious how the Champion stamp mill ruins survived another winter.  Big change. The huge jaw crusher had fallen through the wooden supports holding it up. It was not unexpected.  It was just a matter of when.

The pulley of the jaw crusher is still partially visible in the center after falling through the supporting deck.

 

View from Winter 2009

Then another change: someone with too much time on their hands moved the old school bus from where it had sat for decades near a mining camp, to a quarter mile away. I can’t fathom why this was done.  The new site is not very interesting.  Well I suppose it’s better than being pushed into the creek which was a lot closer.

The old school bus in its new location (actually it says Colorado State Forest Service on the side, so not school)

The next change was the aqueduct is no longer an aqueduct.

A pipeline has replaced the aqueduct.

The most disappointing change was a fir tree which was hundreds of years old succumbed to the winds of winter.  It was the oldest fir tree that I have seen in the wild.

This old fir tree was hundreds of years old. The diameter where the tree broke was 3.5 feet. It’s nearly 6 feet in diameter near the ground.

By the end of the hike I was feeling pretty unsettled with how much things had changed in a year. So much for those unchanging familiar landscapes.

It seemed like a longer than usual winter.  So much snow. So much work. So much bullshit. I had looked forward to camping in the Utah deserts, in the silence, the solitude, in the warmth. But a world pandemic got in the way of it, with lockdowns and a piling on of the work schedule. I’m grateful to be able to earn a living, many are not so lucky.  The pandemic will likely affect business eventually since what I do is connected to disposable income.  I imagine that some customers will no longer have disposable income.

Mourning cloak butterfly on an aspen trunk

I’m hoping to update more often, but who knows. I’m trying to get my photographic “work flow” established on the Linux desktop since I no longer use Windows.  I’ll be more likely to update if it’s easy to do so, and developing the photos has been a block in the recent past. I estimate I’ve taken somewhere around 40,000 photos in the last 20 years.  For Linux, I seem to be settling on Rapid Photo Downloader to get the photos into folders and RawTherapee to process the raw images.

Lichen on rust

 

Vibrant Colors

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While the aspen trees weren’t as spectacular as in previous years (especially in the highest elevations), this fall is not without it’s colors.  I took these photos on a misty morning in Forsythe Canyon.

I have a number of miscellaneous things to update, but first another photo.

I didn’t place this leaf on the fern; the leaf just happened to land on it.

 

I have no regrets leaving Facebook after the 2016 election, during which my Facebook experience was pretty horrible.  In the intervening time, it’s come to light all the unsavory things that Facebook did during that time. Social media has become a pox on our culture with too many people yelling into echo chambers.  It seems that partisan internet debate culture has moved on to the roads, where the guy blocking your path is just another person from the opposite political party. In other words, I seem to be encountering more bullies on the road.

On the medical front, some recent imaging determined that I have permanent damage in my heart muscle.  I’m feeling ok, and have been getting out hiking and biking as much as possible. I haven’t made it to a top of a mountain yet, but I’ve come close.

Likely pollution floating on the aptly named Gross Reservoir.

I’ve been creating some songs in the studio with my friend Kevin.  I am more of a producer than a musician (not that they are mutually exclusive).  I’ll come up with a drum track and he will invent a bass line to go with it. Then we’ll go back and record some guitar tracks on top of that.  After that session, I will usually spend some with the tracks editing (sometimes pretty heavily, even to the point of changing some notes), adding keyboards, and mixing.  The result so far is we have about 10 songs in various stages of completion. But I consider these to be just demos.  The structure is there and they are ready for addition instruments and/or vocals if desired.  Then if we like the end product, we will probably re-record the song to make it really tight.  Kevin is a good musician and I’ve been pretty surprised with what we’ve done so far and how quickly he can come up with riffs.  He can do it in an instant while it takes me days.

So many different colors, from the blue spruce, to the moss, orange lichen on the cliff and the leaves.

Is it just me, or is the signal to noise ratio on my phone getting worse.  It seems like for every real phone call I receive, I will get 50 calls from spammers, robo scammers, and from some lady who can’t seem to get her headset adjusted.  At least I haven’t heard from the “IRS” in a while.