In the Mountains Near Denver; Dealing With Blog Comments

At Denver KOA West, Denver, Colorado...

We arrived at the KOA Denver West  in the mid-afternoon, with only four days' stay available to us. After that, according to the desk clerk, we must move elsewhere. We've never seen RV parks so crowded as on this trip, and our stay in the Denver area is complicated because there are so few RV parks available and so few of those that are not full. Forget about the state parks; they've been sold out for months. It's sort of a perfect storm, in that RVing is more popular than ever, fuel prices are low and the RV manufacturers are turning out thousands of new units every month that are snapped up by the public. 

We took a short tour of four of the RV parks nearest Denver, and in only one of those, Dakota Ridge, would we feel comfortable. We're not really that prudish, but a couple of the ones we saw today were nothing but dumps. The Dallas/Fort Worth area has a similar lack of decent RV parks, and there are very few new ones being built anywhere. Somebody is going to recognize the need one day and will do well satisfying it.

Our view at this KOA park is perhaps the most scenic we've ever seen. Here's our parking spot on top of a mountain west of Denver at an elevation of about nine thousand feet:

Spot #9 at the Denver KOA West

View From our Windshield

When I raise the windshield shade in the mornings, our view is breathtaking; the photo above really doesn't do it justice. A bonus is that we're far enough away from city lights that we can see lots of stars. We sat outside last night, looking at the heavens and wondering how life could get any better. It wasn't long until we grabbed a jacket, however; it gets pretty cool up here at night. As I write this at about 10 p.m., I look over at the indoor/outdoor temperature gauge and I see this reading; occasionally I hear Phannie's cabin heaters cycle on and off:

I know it's cruel to keep reminding my heat-soaked friends in Texas about our temperate summer climate up here, and it is mildly troubling that I keep doing it anyway. So far, though, it doesn't keep me awake at night. 

Having an appreciation for oddities, curiosities and things I don't see every day, I thought this bag of potato chips looked funny. We bought the package in Denver (5,200 feet elevation) and carried it back up the mountain with us (9,000 feet). The bag looked normal when we were in the store; now, it looks like it has put on a little weight, to which I can certainly relate. If my grandsons were here, we would have a perfect little object lesson on atmospheric pressure changes with altitude.

Now, about the comments thing I mentioned in the title of this post: I read friend Craig MacKenna's post of July 28, in which he identified several blogs upon which he couldn't write comments. One of those blogs is this one, and that got me to delve into Blogger to see what the problem could be. I also looked online and found that Blogger's problem with its disappearing comments feature has been going on for years. After looking at the recommended fixes and trying them, nothing seemed to work. Then I disabled the "Use Google+ comments" selection and Voila! The comments feature reappeared. 

Now I'm not sure what the ramifications of this may be but, whatever they are, having the comments feature working on my blog is essential, in my view. I enjoy reading and responding to them, as it helps establish a relationship with readers, even if it's virtual. A comment, no matter how brief, adds a personal element to the discourse that lifts the impersonal words on a blog page to the level of a conversation between friends, and I like that.

Because of Blogger's problems capturing comments, I have toyed with the idea of changing to another blogging platform. However, I really like most of Blogger's features, especially its handling of photos. So, I'm hoping this change will put the comments problem to bed for good. We'll see.

You may have noticed that we haven't given any shout outs to restaurants we've visited recently. That's because we haven't found one in quite a while that I would feel good about recommending. 

Stay cool, y'all!

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.