(continued from here) This turned out to be a LONG day. Not too bad, just long. The only thing I needed to do all day was to drive from a hotel in Gunnison to a hotel in Rangely. According to Google Maps, this could be … Continue reading Colorado 2022 Trip Report (Day 3)
(continued from Day 0) I’ve driven through the town of Gunnison, Colorado on the way to/from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park a handful of times now, but this time Gunnison is my destination. (Well, the first of a few destinations on this trip.) … Continue reading Colorado 2022 Trip Report (Days 1 and 2)
Travel is hard. Especially when you’re skipping across time zones and have medication you take every three hours. And very especially when you also have to get up super early to catch your flight. I set my alarm for 3:45 AM. I had decided the … Continue reading Colorado 2022 Trip Report (Day 0)
“If it’s true that you are only as old as you feel, then my age fluctuates massively throughout the day.”
I wrote the sentence above, as the first line of this blog’s Introduction nearly a year ago. Since then, thanks to additional medications, these massive fluctuations all but disappeared. But since Since then, thanks to the progression of the disease, the fluctuations and general fatigue are creeping back in. Right now, I’m getting ready to head out on another Colorado trip, so watch for my periodic Trip Reports from the field! When I get back, I intend to undertake an overhaul of this blog. OK, maybe not a full-fledged overhaul. But at the very least, I intend to remove the year-old Introduction post, and instead link to a separate page where I will have actual biographical information. That page will also have a section detailing (as well as I can remember it) my experiences with Parkinson’s disease, the symptoms I’ve had along the way, and the various treatments I’ve tried. There will also be a section explaining my over-arching, long-term travel plan (though I’ve not done a great job of sticking with it).
I’m not sure how long it will take to write all that, but I imagine it will take all of my writing time for a few weeks. SO…the next two weeks should be Trip Reports from Colorado. After that, there maybe a month or more of posts where I just copy/paste something I wrote in the past (Cedric Explains 1980s Video Games and Random Thoughts From a Damn Weirdo are recent examples of such posts). Oh, but then it’ll be Bear’s birthday, so that’ll occupy my time for a few weeks…
…and now…The Rest of Arkansas (continued from part one). I departed Hot Springs early one morn, and made my way through a massive road construction project to the city of Little Rock, which I must say had a much more impressive downtown than I expected … Continue reading Arkansas, part two (June 2021)
Wel, well, welll…ThrowBack Thursday, you say? All right. If that’s the way it’s gotta be. This week, the Wayback Machine doesn’t have to go way back – just over a year, to the last trip I took before I started blogging. (But this shan’t be … Continue reading Arkansas, part one (June 2021)
It’s looking like my next trip will be a return to Colorado. I’m thinking late September / early October. At that time of year, Denver may be 80 degrees or there may be nine inches of fresh snow on the ground. Or both. My last couple of visits to the state have focused on specific geographic areas: Western Colorado and Southern Colorado. This time will likely be more of a “Leftover Colorado” – a state-wide scattering of places I just haven’t been yet. The two main places that come to mind are Dinosaur National Monument and Crested Butte, which are nowhere near one another. Other likely destinations include:
Mineral Loop Trail (Leadville, Colo.),
Gunnison Pioneer Museum,
The “back side” of Black Canyon of the Gunnison,
and I will likely start and/or finish this trip with Doors Open Denver.
I’ve also started reviewing maps to identify stretches of US or state highways that I’ve never driven. But I’m finding there aren’t many such stretches left in the mountains of Colorado.
In last week’s ThrowBack Thursday, I mentioned having problems with my Old Cheap-n-Crappy(TM) camera, resulting in a sorry lack of photos from Mesa Verde National Park. Shortly after I posted that, I realized that I had also taken some photos with my phone’s camera. Sometimes … Continue reading Southern Colorado, part three (Sept 2020)
After the Paint Mines, I spent a few days checking out various museums in the Colorado Springs area, and a little time gambling in the town of Cripple Creek. Each of the museums I visited (Miramont Castle, Western Museum of Mining and Industry, and Ghost … Continue reading Southern Colorado, part two (Sept 2020)
I managed to take three trips over the first five months of this year, so it seemed like I was finally getting onto the kind of schedule I had hoped for before I stopped working. But now it’s looking like the next five months will only include one trip. And that one may be dependent on forest fires.
Part of the reason for this lack of travel is that I still haven’t decided whether to maintain my current residence or to move away. House prices in Charlotte have been shooting upwards, so I might be able to make a serious profit if I sell my current home and move to a cheaper area – thus my initial inclination to move. I’d really like to move back to Colorado. Alternatively, I could return to my original homeland on the Great Plains. But I considered moving to these places a couple years ago, and decided against it, for reasons that still apply. Houses in Colorado aren’t cheap enough to allow me to keep the profit from selling this house. Lincoln and Kearney, Nebraska are sounding good; even the Des Moines (Iowa) area might not be so bad. But I would lose all the advantages of living in/near a big city, and there aren’t mountains (or beaches) nearby.
And now I’m hungry, so I’m done writing.
Voyages with Parkinson's 