A big shout-out to all the wonderful moms who are reading this post. John wants to know if there is anything in particular I want to do today. I said, not really but how about we take a drive? There are little two-track roads that go off in all directions. I’m sure one of them will lead us into so some sort of trouble.
John decides we are going to take the Independence Mountain BLM Road #2504.
I’m not sure why it’s called Independence Mountain. Back in the 1800s when there was gold mining going on, gold miners had many conflicts with the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute Indians that occupied this land. The miners were given 20 days in which to evacuate Independence mountain. On July 4, 1870, sometime during a fierce battle between the Cheyenne and Ute Indians, the remaining miners on Independence Mountain were massacred. Well, all righty then.
We are hoping to see moose or elk. We see a really small herd of pronghorn.
Plenty of blue birds are flitting around too. I know this guy isn’t flitting but you get what I mean.
There are amazing views as we travel up the winding road. We just aren’t getting tired of this view!
Oh, hey look! Its another pronghorn. He’s a good looking male. Now if we can just see a moose or elk, that would be such a nice Mother’s Day present.
We stop so John can look around for rocks. I can see the campground from here. We are one of those black spots towards the bottom. It’s a very cool view of the valley I think.
The rockhounding in this area isn’t great so we continue on up. Oh! My! Goodness! Would you look at that! It’s another pronghorn! I’m so surprised and excited!
We get to the tippy-top and find snow. There are some tracks where people have gone through the field to get around the snow so we pop the Green Lizard into 4-wheel drive and off we go. It is a short ride. On the other side of the snow is more snow. Since this is as far as we’re going, selfie time!
On our way up we saw this fenced in area, a very odd small circle. Turns out this is one of the spots the Indians camped.
We see some rock circles clearly and others covered by grasses.
We’re still looking for elk and moose and guess what we see? You are never going to be able to guess. The elusive pronghorn.
*sigh* Maybe we will see an elk or moose over this next rise. We aren’t counting on it though.
Lovely, lovely – really beautiful country – and wildlife. Those antelope by the way – are not antelopes at all – not even from the same family tree. They are – they are pronghorns – simply that – the only species remaining in their family tree. Google them – a most fascinating animal. in our last working assignment I gave daily talks about these guys.
Happy to see you guys still out there having a ball!!!
Hi Ray,
Thanks for the info on the “pronghorns.” I updated the post. We are still having a great time!