Heading Down

September 28th, 2025

I’m approaching the end of my 4th summer of being a nomad. On the 16th, I needed to empty my trailer tanks and get fresh water. Rather than returning afterward to the same campsite, I decided I might as well start heading to a lower elevation.

The last couple of nights, there has been snow on the peaks above me. It melts if the sun is back out the following day, but temperatures early in the morning are hovering around freezing. Maybe there will be a hard frost soon or maybe it will warm up again. I can only see out about 10 days in the forecast, so perhaps it is best to seek warmer temperatures. Normally, for ever thousand feet in elevation, you find a difference of 3 degrees. So, moving down to the 8,000 foot level may give me an early morning increase of about 6 degrees. I am moving to a familiar campground near Nederland, Kelly Dahl. I stayed there a few nights back in the spring when waiting for the snow to melt at higher elevations. I also spent a lot of nights there back in 2023 while I loitered close to Boulder for medical reasons. The campground is very nice, quiet, and close to a town with a laundromat and grocery store. There is even an old railroad coach left from the early mining days where you can now get a good cup of coffee in the morning, along with a pretty good breakfast burrito. There a number of good hiking trails in the area, including those at the Mud Lake and Caribou Ranch Open Spaces.

From the campground it is only about a 45 minute drive down scenic Boulder Creek Canyon to the city of Boulder, close to where my son lives. Depending on weather, I will move down once it gets cold here. There I will winterize my trailer and find a place to store it for the winter. That will mark the end of camping for 2025, as I will then drive across Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, and the corner of Indiana on my way to visit my older son in southeast Michigan.

I won’t be travelling to Arizona for the winter, but have decided to spend the winter in Minnesota with family. I am tired of the long months of winter in the desert. My eyes need greenery, snow, and friends. I need less loneliness during the holidays.

And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want, what do you call it?

Freedom or Loneliness?