I’ve never really had a nine-to-five Monday through Friday schedule and I positively loved the police schedule in dispatch of two on, two off and every weekend was three days alternating between working or off duty. Paradoxically now that I am retired I find weekends to be a nuisance, and wish everyone had to work seven days a week, just for my convenience you understand.
Schools don’t help of course with my scheduling problems. In a couple of weeks the tents will be a happy memory and school buses will join us clogging the highways and peace and serenity will return to my lawn, the public open spaces we enjoy so much.
So the joy of camping at 9400 feet outside Silverton, a tourist center created out of a 19th century silver mining rush is mitigated slightly by all the traffic. Our spot is pleasant enough tucked in by the side of a gravel road that is, it turns out quite popular. I wonder why?
We are feeling slightly hamstrung by our Monday morning visit to the dealer for the factory mandated handbrake repair, so camping 90 minutes from Montrose seemed a good idea, and it was. However I wouldn’t have done it on the weekend, one of the last weekends of school break summer in a place where winter starts to loom. The trees below our parked Promaster offer a shady picnic area as the dust generating high speed busy locals rush by overhead.
Ah, if all the world’s problems were this serious! The night sky is astounding especially as the moon is waning and riding late. The silence at night when the last of these blue arsed flies finally goes to bed is total. The air is cold and crisp and even in the heat of the day all you need is a little shade. Let them rush wherever they are going. We are snug.
Driving fast creates washboard which will wreck these rushing vehicles given time. And then the owners will get online and complain about how their vehicles fall apart prematurely.
I first met washboard riding a motorcycle in West Africa 50 years ago. The advice then was to drive fifty miles an hour to smooth out the ruts but that takes nerve and a long wide open road across the desert.
Around here I see travel trailers bouncing like ping pong balls towed at speed over this stuff. No wonder campers fall apart. Arlene plod slowly at ten of fifteen miles an hour trying to lick the smoothest route and marvel at the Sierra at which we are passed as we pull over. 
Spot the dog on the ridge keeping an eye on me as I poke around down by the creek with my camera, waiting for the sun to come up:
Our Go Treads gold into a small package and can be used as mud planks in soft soil or as steps to level the van. Thusly:
