PUEBLO, CO

Wednesday morning, April 13th, we left Dodge City, KS - as they say, "We got out of Dodge"! We hit Hwy 50 headed west and passed through Cimarron, Garden City, Syracuse, and a couple of other smaller commmunities. The landscape is the same as it has been for most of the way across Kansas - wide open, huge fields and large tracts of grassland.

In Cimmaron, the Santa Fe Trail splits into a southern route (Cimmaron) and a northern (Mountain). The Cimmaron Route crosses a dry arid landscape and the Mountain Route crosses at a higher elevation with better access to water. For the travelers, there were pros & cons for either route. The Cimmaron route was shorter, but the folks had to make sure to carry enough water for themselves and the animals. Water wasn't a problem on the Mountain Route, but there were several high mountain passes that had to be crossed. We chose to go the Mountain Route. As before, there are several sections where the highway actually follows the trail itself.

A few miles west of Syracuse, KS we crossed into Colorado.

The landscape is pretty much the same. We're still seeing huge cattle feeder lots all along and and as we got farther west we started seeing the mountains in the distance.

We passed through the towns of Lamar, Las Animas, La Junta, and Rocky Ford. The Santa Fe Trail turns more southerly in La Junta, but we took a detour and went straight on to Pueblo. We checked into Lake Pueblo State Park for a couple of nights and got a really good site with a great view front & back. Out front we're overlooking Lake Pueblo and out the back we have a high butte with a rocky landscape. Across the lake we can see a snow covered mountain in the distance.

Today (Thursday) was a day for relaxing. After a slow start, we made a run to the local Wal-Mart for a few commodities and then spent a few hours exploring this state park. It is huge! I read in one of the broucheres that the lake is 11 miles long with a 60 mile shore line. The area of the park itself covers about 16 square miles. There are a total of 3 campgrounds - one on the south side at the head of the lake overlooking the dam (the one we're in) has 93 campsites, and two on the south side of the lake with a total of 396 sites. We rode around the lake loop road, below the dam, and through all the campgrounds.

We saw several rabbits and ground squirrels, plus there are lots of Cholla cactus.

Then came the birds -- a lot of "good" birds!! The pictures below are: Western Meadowlark, Curve-billed Thrasher, Mountain Bluebird, Scale Quail, Says Phoebe, Canyon Towhee, and a female Horned Lark.

We rode into town later in the afternoon for a Little Ceasar's Pizza and passed by another Temple Baptist Church (for you that may not know, that's the name of our church at home). Couldn't resist a picture of their marquee!

Tomorrow is moving day again and we have a change of plans. Originally we took this detour from the Santa Fe Trail to check out more of southern Colorado. We intended to go to Durango for 2-3 days, then to Mesa Verde National Park for a couple of days. However, Mother Nature and the weather changed our minds. Durango and Mesa Verde are a lot higher elevation (6000-8000 feet) and winter must not be over up there. The weather forecast for the next several days calls for snow and temperatures in the 20's. Not interested in driving the motorhome in the high mountains in that kind of weather, so instead we're heading south. The plan now is to go to Santa Fe for the weekend - finish up with the Santa Fe Trail, and then head on to southern New Mexico over the next week or so. There are a couple of National Wildlife Refuges along the way that we want to check out.