#4: [13-Jul-21]

#3: [06-Aug-10]

#2: [03-Aug-04]

10-Sep-2001 -- Though I had not previously driven in this area, it appeared to be like other "oil patch" portions of NW New Mexico; lots of roads, oil and gas wells, compressor stations, etc. It appeared that I would be able to drive right to the confluence and actually was surprised that it had not yet been visited. I also decided to make it a bit more of a challenge; I regularly use my Garmin GPS III+ to navigate in the dark to locate calling stations during owl surveys. So I utilized Mapsource to create a set of way points at road junctions leading to the confluence. I then drove to Farmington, watched the Bronco win on Monday Night Football, and well after dark headed out to Cedar Hill and used GPS to find my way through the way points to the road closest to the confluence. I had to adjust one time when I realized the road I was planning on using did not go through to the next way point, but by that time I was within 2 km of the confluence, so crossed over into the Southern Ute Reservation (=Colorado), then back into New Mexico and past the way point. I backtracked, found a track road to the north to the Reservation fence line again, then west along the fence until I was 20 m from the confluence. I crossed the fence and just before midnight on 10 September 2001 was within a few meters of the confluence (Picture 2). I fell asleep in the camper to the drone of distant compressors.

The next morning I spent some time homing in on the confluence and taking the documenting photos (standing on top of the canoe on top of my pickup). The view to the north shows the San Juan Mountains in Colorado over the white placard in the "confluence bush" (Picture 1). To the south (Picture 3) is a pinyon and juniper covered hill shown on the 1/100,000 map as "Lone Tree Mountain". Mapsource shows my "confluence bush" to be 3 m north of the actual confluence and in turn, the confluence 3 m north of the Southern Ute Reservation boundary fence and the state line. Therefore ground evidence and Mapsource indicate that this confluence actually is in Colorado rather than New Mexico.

As I was finishing up documentation, the first stories of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington began to come over the radio.

In the Southern Ute Indian Reservation, exactly on the border between NM and OR.