“The land in Colorado…” I’ve been hearing about it for as long as I can remember. It always seemed like some far-off dreamland when I was a kid. Somewhere exotic, unattainable. Somewhere so far away I would never see it.

And yet, here we are. Knocking down trees and camping on it. Our very own slice of mountain top paradise. Let me back up a sec and tell you how we ended up here.

When I was growing up, my father was part of some kind of investment group. They would buy various things (like what, I have no idea – I was a kid) that would hopefully make them money some day. At some point, the group broke up and my father ended up with this piece of land, 5.94 acres somewhere in Colorado.

All my life, I heard about this place, and my parents would regularly get random offers in the mail to buy it. For whatever reason, they never sold it.

After my father passed, my mother was considering what to do with it, and she asked us if we wanted it. We said “hell, YES!” In a big hurry and she signed it over to us.

Figuring out what paperwork we had to file and where to file it was entertaining in its own right, and it took us to the county seat of Costilla County in south central Colorado, a tiny town called San Luis. We found the office, filed the paperwork, and started getting the tax bills sent to our house in Denver. We were official.

We wanted to see what we had acquired – the very first time we headed out, we stopped by the local ranch office and were given a crudely drawn map with the route to our parcel highlighted in yellow. We had NO IDEA just how far out (not to mention UP) a set of gravel roads we’d have to drive. Eventually, we found it – or the thought we had. It seemed to be right given the map we had.

We went back a few times over the years, never spending more than a few hours wandering around. We started getting all the random offers for purchase in the mail like my parents did. We just didn’t want to get rid of it, though.

Finally this summer, we decided to DO something with it. Matt found more accurate GPS coordinates for the corners of the property and how to find them in real time on his watch.

We headed out, car fully packed with tools and camping gear, determined to carve out a little patch on which to pitch a tent. We also took my car with the platform just in case we couldn’t and had to sleep in it…

And we did! Barely. It started raining about three seconds after we leveled a spot just big enough for our tent and set it up. A few hours of sitting in the car later, it stopped raining and we were able to look around some more.

We carved a path from the road to our tent pad, and set up our camp kitchen in a little nook. We cut a million branches so they didn’t scrape our faces. We slept well that night.

The next day, we headed to Great Sand Dunes NP and Zapata Falls to play around for awhile and later to Alamosa for more supplies.

The last morning we were there, Matt knocked down a bunch of trees. We’d both been worried about trees falling on our heads as we slept. There were a LOT of dead trees. We cleared up a few more areas and called it good.

This was a dream come true for me, actually staying and sleeping on our land, that far-off fantasy place I’d been hearing about my whole life… I can’t wait to make more use of it in the future!

….a few weeks later….

We went back to the land (at some point, I feel like we ought to name it something more interesting than “the land”) this week…

More knocking down trees, more leveling of dirt, more clearing of underbrush. This time, it didn’t rain on us at all, and we were able to get a ton done.

We cleaned out another spot that will become a sitting area and maybe fire pit in the future, and I even cut down my first tree! That sawing business is hard work!

We also got to explore the quaint little town of San Luis a little more. The best part of it was the Mexican Thai restaurant, Mrs. Rio’s. I know that combo makes very little sense, but damn it was good!

After a successful couple days, we headed back home with dreams of what next year has in store for the land in our heads.