It's day 427...it's also July 6th 2020...and we are on Blue Mountain Road...in... Colorado

It's day 427...it's also July 6th 2020...and we are on Blue Mountain Road...in... Colorado

I think we only drove....for around an hour.....made it 10 miles in maybe.....slow going in a 32 foot RV on these roads.....but far enough up...that we could feel the drop in temperatures.....and we're watching the tree;s and shrubs....grow greener.......

Miners Draw Road......becomes Blue Mountain Road as we crossed back over into Colorado...it's also known as Moffet County Road 16......and the best part.....we had no idea how far this dirt road goes....but were gonna find out......just wouldn't be today.....

I'd read about a spot called Harpers Corner....and it isn't that far from us. I thought we were headed there until we crested a Mountain, came around a bend and the view struck me in a way that felt like it actually stepped on the brakes for me. I hadn’t realized how high we had actually travelled... until it was all laid out below us. The perfect spot…complete with fire ring lay ahead of us. I backed in and situated Vacilando ensuring that I’d fall asleep, and wake up looking at the very same beauty we had spent all day admiring just yesterday....but from a very different...in fact...the opposite perspective. Today.....we're on that ridge....looking over down the side of these Mountains, and down over Miners Draw where we had slept just the night before. With the hiking potential off the charts and a view like this…Harpers Corner would have to wait...

The vastness....the massiveness of these Mountains never gets old.

I just.....can’t .....help but soak it all in. Always wondering who and what came before us..... not so much how many people ....tourists...like us.....found it before we did.....but I mean more.....Those Dinasaurs hundreds of million years ago....am I standing where one stood....long before this was a mountain.....you know....before the universe pulled that massive million year hat trick on the area...using volcanoes and earth quakes to shuv mountains up outta the forests and jungles to create a new....a different paradise......And this paradise......wandered by mountain lions..... bison and bear....how many have walked this very same road that we just drove up...before it was a road.....

Are we sleeping where the Ute...or Paiute peoples built villages....and hunted those buffalo across these plains by day..... returning to a mountainside camp......or did they live amongst the buffalo on the plains.....

Did Spanish explorers pass through here

The Ute wars spanned some 74 years in the region.....how many battles took place here.....or on the prairies were looking out over.....the one we slept on last night.

And are we sleeping where US Army....and Cavalry....troops came through in their final push....to relagate an entire people to predetermined reservation land way over there....in that Uinta Basin.....

And the cowboys....how many hundreds of herds of cattle did they wrangle across that prairie....and up thru this draw....to summer grazing fields....and back down the other way....the lowland safe harbor from winter.... before the seasons first snow fall.

More of those aging corrals along the way up here told us they were definitely here...for a long time.....and the occassional stock trailer passing by....tells us they still are.

It's a pretty incredible mental contrast.....looking around at all this.....the quietness of it all....seemlingly so untouched....and yet....these mountains....these prairies have seen more than we'll ever know.....watched quietly.....just like they are right now....watching the three of us look at......what they see every day.

Dougie and I ventured out a bit further with each walk....sticking near the road for the most part. We know that for the most part.....those blackbears....and mountain lions.....would prefer to avoid us.....but I guess ya never know when one might be having a bad day....so why push it. And rattlers......those dang things just seem to be a fixture in these parts.....can't say we've seen many....and we're hoping to keep it that way....

Exploring....and....well....lets face it.....just staring into all of this makes it hard to believe that we've gotten barely 25 miles or so from where we camped in Jenson. Looks like Vernal is about the closest to the area when ya need a town.....but map says a place called Cortez Colorado is around 60 miles away. ....and definitely a place to put on the list to visit. Read some pretty cool stuff about the area....and the history of the town.....Definitely worth a look at some point.

Truth is.....sitting here.....absorbing all this.....there's not a lot to write about. There's a lot to see....a lot to absorb....a lot to think about....a lot to wonder about.....there's also plenty of time for random thoughts....

In one particular moment I had a flash back.....to Los Angelos California. How excited I was to go....a transfer at work had given me the opportunity to go home. I'd always considered California home.....I mean....isn't where you were born the same as where your from....Home? While I've since learned....that isn't always the case .....but in 1994...I still considered California home.....what I hadn't considered....California's a big place....and that the place I had left as a teenager some 20 years prior....Gilroy...California......was not Los Angelas.....and it definitely wasn't 1994 Los Angeles....a city still deeply scared from the riots of 1992 ....the unrest......and still very fresh off the Northridge earthquake....that devistated the city in January 94.....And nobody had a clue that in just a few short months, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman would be murdered, and the O.J. Simpson trial would begin, adding even more fuel to the racial tensions that permeated the city.

And how quickly my excitement would fade as reality kicked in. I'd never lived in a place where complete strangers walked up to me on the street and asked me for money....how at first I just felt bad for them..... and gave them had...but then how quickly I realized I couldn't afford to be that nice....or feel that bad...and then getting yelled at by a complete stranger when I said no...or that I couldnt.

I'd No idea how frequently our stores would be robbed at gun point....what that felt like.....and how proficient we would become at executing a lock down....

I'd never seen a dead person....until the morning I took the trash out at work and found one in a dumpster.

Or getting lost finding my way home from a night out with friends....being pulled over by a police officer on a freeway off ramp....he looked at us and asked if we were lost.....when I said yea....his response...."Listen to me carefully.....enter the freeway here....drive 20 miles and take the first Santa Monica exit. When I leave your car...roll up your windows and lock your doors.....don't open them until you are home. It'd would be until later that we'd realized....that his direction....his tone..... was because we were white....and Compton wasn't.

And that weekend road trip....back to Gilroy.....finding the town unrecognizable and thinking....."My California"....might be gone.

And getting ready to leave California....for Washington State....and wondering....had this place taken a swipe at my humanity? Am I different now? I'd have to be....right?

Such a random flashback to have here...sitting where we are...I think it's because of the complete oppositeness of it all. A city of 3.5 million people crammed into about 300,000 acres. And over here, some 800 or 900 miles away, an area roughly the same in acreage, but you'd be hard-pressed to find even 30,000 humans within 50 miles in any direction."

There for sure...plenty of cool stuff about LA too...I got to see a lot of it...but I think right now.....I think I'll take this...

Didn't really want to.....but at the same time....kinda had to....check in on the News....insert Video....

Not sure how long we'll hang out here.....Still got that Harpers Corner to check out.....

And I wonder what we'll learn there