An idyllic scene in high desert range land.

Mike and I own 40 acres of “ranch” land about 30 miles south of the Grand Canyon at Howard Mesa. For the past three years in a row, I’ve spent a good portion of my summer camping out there with my dog, bird, and horses.

I’m an explorer. I like to look at a map, find a potential destination, then hop in my Jeep (or helicopter) and see what it looks like. On a summer day in 2006, Jack the Dog and I took the Jeep to follow some of the dirt roads that run through National Forest land just south of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. My objective was to take a photo of the Grand Canyon Railroad’s steam engine as it made its way to the depot in Grand Canyon Village.

I wrote about that day in my blog, so I won’t spend a lot of time repeating myself here. I’ll cut to the chase.

This gate and corral was on one of the roads I followed near the railroad tracks before I got into the National Forest. Nearby were the remains of a few buildings. It had once been part of a train station where cattle had been loaded onto cattle cars and shipped south for sale and slaughter. Now it’s just a picturesque spot on a remote dirt road, captured with my camera during a Jeep outing with my dog.