Yankee Boy Basin is an alpine basin in Ouray County, Colorado in the United States and is located in the Uncompahgre National Forest. It is well renowned for its display of wildflowers during the spring and for Twin Falls on Sneffels Creek.
Access is provided by a dirt four wheel drive road which branches off the Ouray County road that runs from Ouray to Camp Bird Mine. The road starts a quarter mile south of Ouray, passes a DOT site, and winds its way up the canyon.
Along the way are several primitive campgrounds that tend to be rarely visited. These encourage collecting dead-and-down firewood, though, which occasionally brings locals and people visiting other campgrounds. In general, though, the area is fairly private.
In the San Juan region of the Rocky Mountains, Yankee Boy Basin is a good place to see wildlife, including: deer, black bears, birds of prey and more.
Famous quotes containing the words yankee and/or boy:
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
A Yankee Doodle do or die;
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s,
Born on the fourth of July.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)