If you drive twenty miles east from Montrose on Highway 50, then make a right turn at the sign indicating the route to Silver Jack Reservoir and drive another 15 miles on a fairly good gravel road, you will come to Big Cimarron State Park. As parks go it is fairly small, with only a dozen or so campsites, but many of those campsites are along the Cimarron River and that makes all the difference.
Now, if you walk to the last campsite on the south end of the park and keep going on the narrow path you will find there, in a short while you come to one of those magical places, where the river leaves the woods and tumbles noisily past you as it makes its way toward its eventual union with the Gunnison River. There’s a pool that might as well have a sign posted in front of it declaring “Trout Present.”
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Just a couple of miles south of this campground is another one, on a small body of water called Beaver Lake. There are another dozen sites or so here that overlook the lake.
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And …. a couple of miles further along the road places you in the Silver Jack Campground, which is the largest of the three, on high ground looking down on Silver Jack Reservoir.
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On the many visits we’ve made to this lovely area, there were always many campsites available, even on the busiest summer weekends. Really, these locations taken together constitute a treasure. And I haven’t even mentioned nearby Rowdy Lake, accessible on a short but rough road, and beyond that is Clear Lake which requires that you actually get out of your vehicle and walk a few hundred yards.
On our way back to Montrose we came upon a herd of elk grazing in a patch of open forest. About forty of them, big and healthy-looking and what can I say … majestic. Robin and I are always struck by the beauty of these animals whenever we are lucky enough to find them in the wild.
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Found this photograph on Substack, and thought there should be some sort of a medal that could be awarded this young woman for pluck and wit.
I suspect that the mastophobics who couldn’t bear to be in the presence of a visible breast were not mollified by her response.
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I have great respect for zombies. From what I’ve seen of them in movies, they are not to be trifled with, and can be surprisingly resourceful at times. They are never a force for good, being basically one of the forms that evil can take on Planet Earth.
So when I say that the Cluck administration is a zombie government I don’t dismiss at all the possibility that it can still do a great deal of harm before all of its members and their adherents are successfully neutralized. But they will be corralled, they will be removed from public office, and we will then be able to go back to ordinary legislative chicanery, which is unlovely but we know how to deal with it.
Unfortunately, while we have been stewing here in our zombie universe, the rest of the free world has moved on without us. We are already so untrustworthy that intelligence services of our former allies won’t tell us anything important because we can’t be counted on to keep a secret. On nearly every front we have moved backward while the world is going forward. Climate change? Human rights? Encouraging young democracies? Useful collaboration with governments that aren’t dictatorships? There really is not an end to this sad story.
Taking into consideration all of the harm Cluck has done to our republic, and all of the sycophantic enabling of him that the Republicans in Congress have done, is there a label that will better fit this whole unseemly gaggle other than traitors? And zombie traitors at that?
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(Periodically I will have what I have called a brain fart. Where a dormant group of neurons awakens for no apparent reason and provides me with a memory. Yesterday that recollection was of a joke which I used to tell often but it has been decades since the last time I did that. Before those unreliable nerve cells go dormant again, I will share it with you. What you have to imagine is that the Scottish Regimental Sergeant-Major speaks with a heavy brogue.)
A Scottish Regimental Sergeant-Major comes into a pharmacy carrying a small box. Finding the pharmacist he opens the box, revealing a smaller one inside. Inside that box is yet another one and inside that one is a very bedraggled condom which he unrolls for the benefit of the pharmacist.
“How much for a new one,” says the Scottish Regimental Sergeant-Major
“Twenty shillings,” was the response.
“How much for repair?” says the soldier.
The druggist is a bit taken aback but answers: “That would be ten shillings,” came the response.
The Scottish Regimental Sergeant-Major then rolls up the condom, places it carefully in the smallest box, then the next one, and finally into the largest of the three containers. He leaves the store.
The next day the soldier returns, calls the druggist over, and after opening all the boxes he takes out the condom, unrolls it, and declares: ‘The regiment votes for repair.”
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Little Home In The Valley 