Goodbye, Blue Monday

Thanks to DaleyGator for the Rule Five linkage!

Most folks have some kind of retirement plan.  Mrs. Animal and yr. obdt. are now at an age where our retirement planning is becoming more a matter of the near term than the long term, and our plan A is to relocate (for a variety of reasons) to Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.  The Kenai is beautiful, not too heavily populated, and has world-class hunting and fishing.  A good place to spend those golden years.

It’s always good to have a Plan B, of course, and I think ours might be either Colorado’s Middle Park or maybe the Yampa Valley.  The same advantages apply, somewhat reduced over Alaska; good hunting and fishing, not too crowded as long as you stay clear of the Steamboat Springs ski area.

Colorado is still a pretty good place to be an outdoors type.  Everybody seems to know about the skiing, but hunting and fishing brings very nearly as much revenue into the state as does skiing.  The biggest elk herd in the lower 48 brings in a lot of hunters, and the mule deer population is still very strong as well.

Middle Park I

Retirement for most folks our age won’t be what it was for our parent’s generation.  It’s probably 50-50 whether Social Security will exist by the time I retire; it almost certainly won’t exist for my children.  I figure on working as long as I’m physically and mentally capable, although precisely what I work on may change.

Back to Colorado.

Middle Park is a nice area.  There are several small towns, including Granby, Hot Sulphur Springs and Kremmling.  Real estate isn’t too outrageous, and Denver with its international airport is only three hours away.

Middle Park II

The Yampa valley is a little farther out.  Middle Park is in the Colorado River drainage, while the Yampa feeds into the Green River, a great trout river that runs out of Wyoming just west of the Medicine Bow.  A little more remote, a little farther from big-city amenities, real estate is a little cheaper in the southern end of the area around the small towns of Yampa and Toponas, but a lot more costly as you get farther north near Steamboat Springs and it’s big ski resort.

Solving the problem, of course, would entail spending more time in each of the areas in question, including up north on the Kenai.  It’s also vitally important to carefully evaluate the hunting and fishing in each area, which can only be done by actual experience.

Monday beckons, True Believers.  Hang on in there.