The Fountain Formation

The Fountain Formation is one of the first masses of rock and earth that thrusts up above the high plains in Colorado.  While the Dakota Hogback actually lies further east and is thus the first part of the Rockies that meets the dawn, the Fountain Formation is much higher and more dramatic.

Seen here from Boulder, Colorado, the Flatirons are certainly evidence enough of that.

The eastern fringe of the Rockies are often obscured by the grand spectacle of the Front Range, but are definitely an interesting place to explore.  In past posts I have considered the high plains to be the true beginning of the great North American western lands.  The eastern rising of the Rockies would definitely be the confirmation.  The land thrusts up, the grass and sagebrush give way to all sorts of trees and streams and rivers.  The sky remains broad from behind, and competes with the planet ahead.  The experience is a wonderful marriage of plains and mountains.

Lovely!  If only I could have seen a bighorn sheep.  They tend to range no further east than this, except up in the Black Hills.  Of course, that is, if they even exist.  I tend to think of them as being kin to jackalopes and unicorns, but I supposedly have been looking in the wrong places.