A bit of a potpourri entry for today. It has been a fairly hectic summer for me, so I figured I’d catch up on some of the thoughts running through my brain at the moment.
For starters, (and endings,) my moose photography season is about done for this year. I started off with a bang but maintenance issues at the cabin and a death in the family really put a crimp on getting as much done as I wanted to accomplish. It’s not a total loss though, I did make a few trips, including one with my buddy Ricky. I didn’t organize the normal group outings this year and it’s a good thing as I may have had to cancel it if I had. Some years are better than others.
I have made quite a bit of progress on my project to photograph ghost towns here in Colorado. Today’s photo is recent, from the town of Matheson, Colorado. I’m finding this to be a very interesting project and traveling around the state looking for these places has proved to be a lot of fun. I’m sure to keep working this subject for the remainder of this year and probably next year. I have a list of about 60 locations and I’ve only done about 1/3 of them to date.
I replaced my 2010 Ford Explorer with a 2023 Toyota Tacoma as my main photography vehicle back in June. I’ve always been a fan of the Tacoma pickup trucks, but boy, I never realized that they have an almost cult status. Seems like every monkey and their uncle buys one and then immediately upgrade it with a lift, bigger tires, better suspension, and all kinds of other after-market modifications. Modifying it was never my intention. I’m finding the TRD 4×4 Offroad model to be pretty much everything I need to get out into the wilderness, and I’m not a 35 year old toy-boy, so there won’t be many rock-crawling trips in it. But, I really like the truck and if the Colorado DMV can figure out how to get me a permanent license plate, I’ll be even happier.
I do have another trip coming up in October, to photograph the Cumbres & Toltec NGRR out of Chama, New Mexico. My buddy Jonathan Steele will be joining me again this year. He’s a great guy to work with and I’m looking forward to getting some new heritage train photos.
After all this, I’ll be gearing up for this year’s bighorn sheep photos and I’m sure I’ll be hitting Rocky Mountain Arsenal for some more bison and deer photography as the year winds down.
On a personal note, and I don’t normally get too deep into my personal health issues in public, but this has been a challenging year for me. I’ve been a diabetic for a few years now, and it was pretty much under control, so I thought, until I had a pretty serious situation manifest itself in March of this year with becoming a full-on diabetic. I lost quite a bit of weight (which would be good if it wasn’t caused by sickness) and ended up having to do insulin injections twice a day. That will be with me for life and it’s been quite the adjustment to my mentality about staying healthy. But, I’m doing okay. I’ve got the blood sugar under control, and the other medical issues I have are all well controlled too. There’s no death sentence, but this is all serious stuff and I have to just suck it up and deal with it. If I want to live into my 80’s, I’ll have to change just about every aspect of my personal life to adapt to this stuff. I’m motivated to stay healthy. On a good note here, the wife and I quit smoking, cold-turkey mind you, back in May. Haven’t fallen off the wagon on that either.
Well, there you have it. That about gets me up to date with everything. I’ll be heading back to Red Feather Lakes for some late summer relaxation with Trudy and the dogs. I’ll check back in on this blog when I’m back from Northern Colorado.
Adios for now.