#4: [13-May-19]

#3: [14-Apr-07]

#2: [24-May-05]

#1: [07-Aug-00]

16-Sep-2025 -- A beautiful, hilly, somewhat wooded confluence, much different from the flat agricultural confluences all around it. My visit started shortly after 10am on a sunny Tuesday, temperature at 77°F and rapidly warming. I parked on a hill on the north-south dirt road 500 meters due west of the confluence. The fallow field west of me was marked (Hunting Lease Network) but east of me was not. I stepped through a barbed wire fence and immediately started downhill through what seemed to be a stepped hayfield, currently fallow, with a good view east toward the confluence (see photo).

At the bottom of the hill straddling the 41st parallel was an oblong field of alfalfa, again fenced with unmarked barbed wire. I chose to skirt this field to the south, and the going was easy as I followed what appeared to be a cattle desire path around the perimeter. Back at 41°N on the east side of the alfalfa, I crossed a rather deep, dry stream bed on an elevated earthen bridge under some ancient cottonwoods.

On the other side, I startled three cows and two calves, who I believe were lying in the shade of this stream bed. Fortunately, they wanted nothing to do with me; after staring for a bit, they trotted off to the southeast. Here, there was another fenced crop, but I found that the point lay to the south in a little copse of trees and scrub. By now, I was seriously sweating and swatting. From the cool shade, the mosquitoes started to swarm. To quote one of the most frequently repeated phrases in the journals of Lewis & Clark: “Mosquitoes troublesome.” Zeroing out took 2-3 minutes, after which I alternately took photos and defended myself against the little buggers. Alas, two of my directional photos ended up too blurry to post.

On the way back, now at a trot myself to outpace the mosquitoes, I opted to skirt the alfalfa field by going north – counterclockwise – rather than retracing my steps. This was a good decision, as this route turned out to be shorter, easier, and more picturesque. I spooked a single white-tailed deer at the northeast corner of the alfalfa. My final vista before reaching the car was a re-creation of the classic Microsoft background, with verdant young hay to the north under a sapphire sky (see photo). I was back at the car at 10:50am, having seen no one. I drove off westward through the village of Bee (tiniest roundabout you’ll ever see) toward the final confluence of my cross-country journey home to Colorado from Michigan.