eastern plains
-
Colorado Bucket List: Picketwire Canyon Dinosaur Tracks
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m a dinosaur snob. I can’t help it. I grew up in an area with a pretty fantastic dinosaur museum. The bar was set really high when I was really young, so I’m not easily impressed. But this place was really cool! Picketwire Canyon is located… Continue reading
-
Castle on the plains – Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site
Bent’s Old Fort was in fact not a fort in the traditional sense. It may have resembled military fortifications, but it was actually a trading post. Brothers Charles and William Bent and their business partner Ceran St. Vrain built the fort a few miles outside La Junta in 1833, choosing this particular place because it… Continue reading
-
A day trip to Pawnee National Grassland
The lands of northeastern Colorado have been inhabited for at least 12,000 years, originally by nomadic hunters. More recently, these lands were the home of the Arapaho and Cheyenne, who were forcibly removed in the 1880s to allow white settlers to establish homesteads and farm the land. As settlers soon learned, though, this shortgrass prairie… Continue reading
-
Colorado Destinations: Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge
If ever there was an area of the US with a bizarre history, this is it. Even the name – which combines ‘arsenal’ and ‘wildlife’ into the same sentence – suggests that this land has quite the storied past. Located immediately northeast of Denver, the land encompassed today by Rocky Mountain Arsenal used to be… Continue reading
-
Colorado Destinations: Paint Mines Interpretive Park
Our early October visit to the Paint Mines on the plains of Colorado was a last-minute change of plans after our weekend camping reservations got rained out. Scattered showers and thunderstorms, I can handle. An inch and a half (4 cm) of rain while tent camping, I cannot. It would’ve been a miserable weekend. So… Continue reading
You must be logged in to post a comment.