Front Range of the Rockies, south of Denver. Residential and commercial property crowd into the Front Range.

On the pages of many outdoor or hunting magazines, photos of the West show mostly places in the Rocky Mountains. As a boy in western New York, I spent hours reading those magazines and came to believe that the West and the Rockies were one in the same. I was 24 years old when I made my first trip west. At that time, I taught high school math, and when school ended in June, I packed some essentials on a motorcycle and headed out. Among other things, I learned that the West was more than the Rockies. Continue reading →