Pawnee Buttes, Lamb Springs and Molly Dog

Yesterday, Guitar and I did something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, hike around Pawnee Buttes. Pawnee Buttes are a series of geological formations in northeast Colorado. You really want to have to go there, to get there. To catch a phrase, it’s desolate there. The only sign of human habitation are a few scattered ranch houses and windmills, yes windmills. This area is pretty windy year round and the power companies have installed hundreds of windmills a few miles from the spot of our hike. If you enlarge the picture to the left you can see some on the ridge, center right in picture.

The trip from the Denver area is about 100 miles, but it’s light years away from the city crowds and madness. The hike itself was about 5 miles round trip and it wound over prairie and through some badlands. We saw only two other people there and they were about 1/2 mile away.

The wildflowers were spectacular. It’s amazing the number of different types of flowers we saw in an area that, in the heat of summer, you would think was barren of flowers. I brought my Rocky Mountain wildflower guide but it was no help at all….This terrain could not be classified as “Rocky Mountain” . On our way to Pawnee we passed miles of prairie that were covered with some type of white morning glory type of flower. When I first spotted a field of them, I said to Guitar that it must have just hailed. That’s what the flowers looked like at a distance. The white covered the ground between other plants and bushes and looked like hail. I tried to take a picture but it just doesn’t show the way the eye sees it.

On the way back home we passed through the “almost” ghost town of Keota, CO. There were maybe, five people living in this otherwise deserted town. This town had it’s heyday just before WWI. At that time it had about 150 town residents and served about a thousand other ranchers, dryland farmers and their families. It had a bank, a newspaper, numerous stores and….no saloons. Today only a few buildings, the water tower and fire hydrants survive.

It was a long and enjoyable day. Guitar and I got back a little after 6 pm and are already beginning to plan for our next hike.

To tide our adventure lust over for the weekend, The Circle, had made plans for an unusual short trip on Saturday morning. Several weeks ago I read an article in a local newspaper about an archaeological site called Lamb Springs. On a local ranch not 20 miles from my home, a rancher in 1960, discovered the bones of a Columbian mammoth, ancient camel and ground sloth. The site now belongs to Douglas County, Colorado and they hold seven tours a year of the site. The Circle will see what this is all about on Saturday. Stay tuned.

While Guitar and I were on our hike yesterday, Molly Dog had an accident. It seems that while chasing a squirrel along the fence in our back yard, she severely cut her foot and tendon on the metal edging around a flower garden. Luckily The Emmer was home at the time and called The Bride. The Bride had to rush home and get her to a vet, who operated immediately. She is now not a happy pooch. Her right front leg is bandaged and in a splint and she is under the effects of heavy sedation for a few days. Total recovery time will be 10 days to two weeks. In looking at the amount of blood on our deck, patio and garage floor, I’m thinking she could have easily bled to death. I will be nurse for that period of time so there will be a break in my adventures for a while.

Thanks for visiting.