Salute
Cool looking country for a
"long earred pony ride"

Not my "pony" but it is my country and the fellow who rides it shares my blood. He and I started on these circles at 8 and 10 there on horse and foot and all the pictures are stored on the hard drive God gave me. I only have a few in this format.

Nice photos!

Cool! Love that good looking mule!

That country has always been hard livin' but boundless beauty. Think of the work to build all those cliff dwellings and why they had to build them. It wasn't just to have a house on a cliff I am pretty sure.
Many of the places where these pictures were taken have only been seen by handfuls of people over the years since those residents moved on. Mostly cowboys and the occasional hunter / hiker. We were just lucky to be all of the above and did not have TV. Instead we had horses and went and lived the life that others watched on the tube. The country is just to vast, rough and dry and too "off the track" to get much traffic. Most of tourist go to the tourist sites and only a few natives prowl the canyons. There was a time we could ride from the house to the San Juan river, about 35 miles as the crow flies and I never did see the trail that the crows fly on, and never see anyone. Then you could turn around and ride back. Open a gate, shut a gate was the only rule, private land or Federal the same. It will never be that again. The private folks now mostly come from some other state and brought their trespass signs with them. The Feds carry M16's and wear body armor looking through the long glass for folks who might pick up an arrowhead or a discard grind stone so they can create another felon.
These are the things that I think about when I read about "Critical Habitat" and "National Monuments" etc. It is just about taking it all back and control over those who really own it. Sadly, just today another story about the same: http://sacramento.cbslocal.com...dents-carrying-guns/