These roads probably show on your Rand McNally Road Atlas. Check the northwest corner of Colorado. Notice how few towns are there. Don't be fooled by labeled dots. For example: If you enter this area from Maybell on US 40, you will find no place in that town to buy gasoline, no place to eat. A little farther down the road, Sunbeam is nowhere to be found. Farther north, there is no town of Hiawatha and Powder Wash appears to be a company town -- just a few look-alike houses and several garage or warehouse-like buildings, a cluster off to itself with no indication the public would be welcome. Labeled dots on your Rand McNally don't always designate towns.

While looking at your map, note the road in the picture above. It runs from WY 430, just north of the WY/CO border, about 100 miles southeastward to Craig. A lonely road -- the kind of road where one preserves the loneliness by traveling it alone.

Rainbow, day one.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the area these roads pass through is vastness. A grand terrain, mostly empty of people, stretching in all directions for great distance. Pictures can't capture this size. You have to be there. You can't take it home with you.

John Rolfe Burroughs got it right when he titled his definitive history of northwestern Colorado, Where the Old West Stayed Young. It hasn't changed much since Butch Cassidy found Browns Hole a good place to visit friends when his presence in more populous areas might not be prudent. Surely, it remains one of the least visited areas of Colorado. [Browns Hole is now called Browns Park -- a park in Colorado is sometimes a big valley.]

Rainbow, day two.

This is not the area discussed in the narrative. This photograph was made on CO 13 between Craig, Colorado and Meeker, Colorado. The early-morning sun on the foreground was as striking as the photograph suggests.