Back to my Ole Stompin' Grounds

This time on the north side of the Grand Mesa

So I was home (meaning: Colorado’s West Slope) from my month-long trip to New Mexico and Utah (see the previous sixteen posts). I settled in an RV park on the north side of the Grand Mesa, in a little burg named, believe it or not, Mesa (!). There isn’t much there, but it does have its own post office and zip code.

The RV park is named the Grand Mesa RV Park and in those days, before they got new owners, they advertised as being “420 friendly.” That’s stoner code for “It’s OK to smoke pot here,” and people did. Marijuana had just been legalized in Colorado, and young hippie types came in from all over the country to camp there.

I went there because it was cheap. And it wasn’t in town. It was out in the country, the way I like it. And close to my beloved Grand Mesa, the top of which was only 17 road miles away up a steep and curvaceous, but paved, state highway.

It’s farm and ranch country there. Here’s the view from the RV park:

The Plateau Valley of Colorado. Click to enlarge.

This photo is larger than most of the ones I post here. You can click it to make it bigger.

In this view, we are looking north (away from the Grand Mesa) towards the Piceance¹ Basin, which is mostly Wasatch Formation rock, laid down after the dinosaurs died out. There is oil up there - more than in all of Saudi Arabia, the geologists claim - in rock that has to be heated to 700º F to get the oil to come out of it. Oil companies are still trying to figure out how to get that oil. So far, they have experimented with heating the rock with steam, and with microwaves. So far, it still costs more to get the oil than what it’s worth.

Now, I have taken you, dear reader, up into the Wasatch Formation before.

It’s weird stuff, and not (to my eye) particularly pretty. But the road down to Interstate 70 from the RV park goes through it, and it does contain some interesting stuff.

The weird, grotesque Wasatch Formation. On the Debeque Cutoff road.

This was at the edge of an inland sea fifty million years ago, and deposits alternated between mud, sand, clay, and vegetation as the sea level rose and fell. Here is another shot of the same formation, taken on the same road:

Wasatch Formation, as seen from the Debeque Cutoff road

Right next door to the RV park, on land not owned by it, was a colony of marmots. I set up a blind and stuck my telephoto out of it. They weren’t fooled: they knew I was there, but I did get a few good shots of them.

Yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris) in a rockpile

Marmots are interesting creatures. Closely related to groundhogs, they are the largest species of ground squirrel in the world. They usually live at much higher elevations than this place - I’ve seen them in Rocky Mountain National Park, up on top of Mount Evans, and in Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park. They live in (actually, under) rockpiles and eat the roots of plants, burrowing under the ground to get at them. They’re cute in a national park but if you’re a farmer or rancher, they’re a pest.

Speaking of cute rodents, I made a trip up to Land’s End on the Mesa to photograph the chipmunks there. There was a young woman risking a case of rabies by feeding them from her hand. So I photographed her.

DO NOT DO THIS! Chipmunks can carry rabies.

But people do it. Next door to me in the RV park was an older couple from South Carolina with a ne’er-do-well grandson or nephew or something who told me a story one day of how he went up there to Land’s End. “And I was gonna git me one of them chipmunks.” He put food on his hand, one climbed in, and he grabbed it.

It bit him. I was secretly hoping he would die of rabies, thereby winning a Darwin award. But honestly, I don’t know if anyone would notice the difference if he did get rabies: he was just about the most worthless cull I ever met.

The RV park had a resident stray cat with one eye missing.

Phone shot of a nameless, homeless cat with one eye missing

The local story was that she had lost the eye to a chicken that pecked it out. Must have been one mean chicken. My heart really went out to her, but Pookie would not allow any other cats in the house. So I just petted her and comforted her the best I could when she came up to me.

An old man living in one of the cabins at the RV Park eventually adopted her. I heard that she died shortly after that. At least she found a forever home before she died.

Elsewhere on the Mesa, at the 8,500-foot level, was a patch of pretty blue irises growing. I stopped and photographed them one day.

Rocky Mountain Iris (Iris missouriensis) on the Grand Mesa

They were growing in a narrow band right at that elevation on the side of the Mesa. Not above or below.

More photos in my next post.

1. Pronounced “Pee-awnse”