Fairplay bound

en route to Fairplay from Buena Vista, across the stunning South Park, the 5D Mk II can't be found on the rear seat floor.  So we pull over in front of a ranch gate.  Randomly, it turns out to be a ranch founded in 1862 and still in the same family.

We spent the next several minutes of the ride, yacking about how cool it would be the day you found out that someday you would be running the family ranch.  Anyway... turns out this place, the Salt Works Ranch, is a big deal.  So is Mr. Hall and the family.  Read about how Hall, astonishingly a Mayflower descendent, found his way from New York to South Park here, fascinating. 

Charles L. Hall established one of Colorado’s earliest industrial enterprises, The Colorado Salt Works, on his ranch west of Hartsel in 1862. By 1868, this business was producing 4,000 pounds of salt daily, much of it for use in processing gold ore. Hall’s son-in-law, Thomas McQuaid, built the Salt Works Ranch into one of Colorado’s largest cattle operations, comprising some 80,000 acres. Salt Works Ranch is still owned by descendants of Charles Hall and is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

5d Mk II, 17-40 f/4.0L @ 17mm, ISO 100, f/11.0, 1/40.


Dorothy

So... the SO tells me she has reason to believe she (Graceland perhaps) is actually from Kansas — despite the MA in her passport.  I am on the road again and since, unlike Dorothy, she has never sullied her ballet (ruby) slippers in The Sunflower State, I offer this snap from the American Roadways gallery on Smugmug.  Just off KS 177 - Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Flint Hills, KS in November 2007.  Highly dependent on RRS and the Gitzo.

A solitary tree waging the unwinnable war against grass.  The longest running conflict on the planet. More