We ate breakfast at a restaurant in downtown Steamboat Springs and then headed west toward Dinosaur National Monument. We stopped at McDonald’s in the town of Craig to buy drinks. As we waited, an old guy began talking to me like we were best friends. (This has been happening to me a lot more often lately, for some reason.) Perhaps I’m old.
Anyway, he told me that he was on his way to Jackson, Wyoming and was sorry he hadn’t seen the wild horses — he’d just heard there was a refuge nearby but didn’t have time to go. I didn’t know about the horses either, but I looked them up and saw we’d pass within 23 miles. We decided to go for it.
Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area is operated by the Bureau of Land Management. It’s huge — 156,500 acres — and consists mostly of sage plains and sand. The road through the center of the area is well-maintained dirt. In the hour and a half we spent there, we saw two campers parked in the middle of nowhere and zero people.
At first, we didn’t see any horses. I finally picked out a white one in the distance and pulled onto a rutted track to see if we could get closer. It wasn’t long before the ruts got deeper. It was a long, hot walk if we got stuck, so I turned around. Back on the main road, we finally saw a herd of about 12 off in the hazy distance, but it wasn’t a satisfying view. We kept going.
I picked a butte in the distance and told my wife I’d turn around there. We were about half a mile from it when I spotted a herd of maybe 25 out on the plains. I saw another two-rut track heading in their direction, and in spite of the protests of my wife I turned onto it. This one was in better shape, although the sage brush scraping against the underside of the car was disconcerting. After maybe a half mile, we got close to the horses.
Four of them were within 30 yards of where we stopped. The others were off in the distance. We couldn’t have wanted better looks. But here’s the thing. It’s really cool knowing that you’re looking at wild horses, but when all is said and done, they just look like horses.
On our way back along the ruts to the main road, another six popped up from somewhere. I thought the gray one with the white patches in the above photo was unique looking. We called it a day and headed on our way.
I found out later from reading the brochure that I wasn’t supposed to pull off the main road. Oh well. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have, but we wouldn’t have had nearly as good a time.