Similar to our camping trip to BLM land accessible from 25 Road in Grand Junction while visiting our daughter's family in Grand Junction, Colorado, we decided to camp on BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land accessible from 27 and 1/4 Road. In addition to camping, this area is also used for OHV (off highway vehicle) and target shooting. However, the OHV riding and target shooting are more structured and/or formal. There is a large parking area for the OHV crowd and an area with shooting prohibited. There are also designated shooting areas: two ranges where one is for rifles and the other one is for pistols (see below and I apologize for the picture quality. The sign is a little washed out and wrinkled from the weather and I couldn't avoid shading from the sign structure).
The rifle range is a good bit away from 27.25 Road so because of that and its higher use I didn't bike there for a picture of that range but this is the sign at the turn off for that range.
The pistol range was closer to the main road and no one was there during one of my bike rides so I did ride out to that range. There was quite a bit of trash around that range both in the target area and the area surrounding the parking lot. In addition to the covered shooting area there were several concrete "block T" shaped shooting platforms to the right that I just missed when taking my picture. There didn't seem to be much respect for the range safety sign as it had several bullet holes.
Speaking of trash, that and the broken glass wasn't as prevalent in this area of BLM land as that we experienced from 25 Road. Most of the trash I saw was around the pistol range and around camp fire rings.
Here are pictures of the camper where we parked. The camp fire ring (not visible in my pictures) was at the front of the camper and someone had burned a mattress there based on the many mattress spring remnants left behind. We parked beyond the OHV parking area but before the ranges. There was quite a bit more vehicle traffic on the main road which was probably to access the ranges.
We biked to the end of the main road one day to get a closer look at the Book Cliff Mountains. You could continue on OHV trails if you had the applicable transportation but there wasn't a trail head for hiking like at the end of 25 Road (see the previous post).
Carpenter Canyon Road begins at the OHV parking area. It leads to the abandoned Book Cliff Mine and supposedly an abandoned nearby town, Carpenter, that was accessible by train (
https://kool1079.com/little-book-cliff-train-history/). We rode our bikes out to the mine one day. We were short on time so I just snapped a couple of photos from nearby. One of the locals said the mine was closed off now since some years back a couple of people entered the mine and died from the poor air quality. The mine was used to produce coal. The presence of coal in the area would explain the occasional black patches of what we thought might be coal on the surface. Here is what I saw when I got close to the mine.
We plan to go back to our daughter's home after leaving 27 and 1/4 Road and staying there for about a week before camping at a local Colorado State Park for the weekdays of the following week, the week of November 16. After that will be Thanksgiving week which we plan to spend with our daughter's family.
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