At the turnoff to Clear Creek is a memorial to a local, Raymond Eade who died in Vietnam with a Purple Heart. Beyond here we are on BLM land.

The franchise Buffalo Run owns just about every decent piece of land I pass, all of the ranches, all of the natural springs, and a flag is flying on most of them. Conservative and somewhat secretive, at least under the radar, I can find no reference to Buffalo Run Ranch other than in Utah. I’m combing through old news clippings now, I find reference to the roads to the Idria Mercury mines, the very ones I will be on when I enter BLM land and climb to Joaquin Ridge, built by inmates from the local state prison during WW1, used for the mining of Quicksilver inthe manufacture of percussion caps to make munitions, but so far the ranches, each called Buffalo Run, with a logo just like the one below, DO NOT show up on a Google search. And this has peaked my interest. If I take a trail that leads off the main route, I may surely find something, or get lost. Either way I’m looking for an adventure, trying to uncover something within myself. It has nothing to do with Joaquin and his band of thieves, and yet everything, I am drawn to these vaqueros of old California, for they strike some deep resonance within that comes from the land and the sky, and the desire to be free.