Mid-Winter Thoughts

A view of Mt. Crested Butte from the Silver Queen list at Crested Butte Ski Resort. Photo taken March 2017.

Happy Mid-Winter! It’s Patricia here! I figured I will give a brief update since our blog has been quiet since late October.

Since we are not full-time RVers, Bojack needed a “winterization“. We had no plans to use him in the winter. Last November Dave and his friend winterized Bojack at the USAF Academy RV lot, and Bojack has just been sitting there, enduring the downslope windstorms that are common to this part the country, waiting for spring.

Bojack chilling in his stable spot on the USAF Academy.

Dave had shoulder surgery just before Thanksgiving. We timed it appropriately so he will be mostly recovered by the time we’re back out camping again, and his recovery has been outstanding. In fact, his doctor cleared him to ski again over a month before we were expecting!

Our family has done a little bit of skiing this winter. It’s one of our favorite things to do. Of course COVID is making it…weird…but at least we’re out there in the fresh air. So far we’ve done 3 day trips. We have a bigger trip in March to Crested Butte, hands down our family’s favorite ski resort in Colorado. It’s one of the more remote locations, which makes it less crowded with tourists who tend to simply choose the closest resorts to the Denver airport: Keystone, Breckenridge, and Vail. We always stay in lodging that welcomes pets, so Ranger can join us. Crested Butte is amazing and we always truly relax while we’re there.

Dave and I surprised each other at Christmas time, each giving the other little gifts for Bojack! I’m so happy we will have a map of the U.S. to hang up with push-pins so we can keep a record of where we’ve been. I gave Dave a little wall-hanging featuring my favorite RV: Mickey’s travel trailer in the cartoon short “Mickey’s Trailer”:

I have a work colleague who also camps with a TT about one weekend per month in the warm season, and he graciously reminded me in late October that it was time to start contemplating where we’d want to do our “shake-out”. I am SO GLAD he reminded me, because here in Colorado, getting campsites at the state parks is an incredibly cutthroat experience!

For Bojack’s 2021 season shakeout, we planned something as chill as what we did in October at Chatfield State Park: just something up the road, the kids could choose to join or not join, they could even come and go as they and their homework allowed. We simply opened up the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website and searched for availability in April at any parks within about 50 miles.

It wasn’t terribly difficult to navigate the site. They have some easy-to-filter search capabilities, so we were able to find one the last sites at Cheyenne Mountain State Park, right on the other side of town from us, the 3rd weekend of April. So that’s our plan.

We also made arrangements at a campsite near Alamosa, Colorado in May, and a campsite near Buena Vista, Colorado in July. The May camping is up in the air at the moment, since my son’s high school just announced his graduation ceremony right before that weekend, so we might be entertaining family here at home instead. We shall see. With COVID, we might still be telling our older parents to not risk travel.

The rest of our plans are even more up the air, as we await a decision about what college our son will be attending. If he chooses to go out-of-state, we expect that we will need to move him to his new school in August, and at the moment we are not planning to involve Bojack for that. It won’t be long before we will have to contemplate autumn reservations…a national park would be nice, and maybe by that point we can venture out of state. Taos, NM and Sedona, AZ are on our list….maybe we can take a trip out there…