When I last wrote we were sitting above Lake Meredith north of Amarillo. We had a plan to drive to northeast New Mexico but realized that for about the same drive time we could be in Colorado and shorten the next day's drive, so we changed plans.
On Friday afternoon we landed at Trinidad Lake State Park just outside Trinidad, Colorado. To get there we moved west from Amarillo through more of that energy/agriculture/transportation zone known as the Texas Panhandle. This is tornado alley. The occasional high school along our route for the past couple of days frequently proclaimed their team pride with slogans like "Home of the Cyclones" or "the Truesdale Texas Tornadoes". That just seems to be asking for trouble to me... but it speaks to the land and its people. The motto for the Texas Panhandle may well be "BRING IT!".
We stopped for gas in a small town. I think it was Dalhart, TX -- population 8,326. I have to say that stepping out of the truck the air smelled like energy/agriculture/transportation. There are literally places in the Texas Panhandle where you can smell natural gas while driving on two lane roads through flat, seemingly barren landscape. The derricks are gone - there is no sign of active drilling there - but the collection and distribution infrastructure is visible and the overflow is a constant reminder of the presence of the energy economy. The smell of agriculture is even more present. 18 wheeler cattle carriers have a certain aroma when they pass us on the highway. Even more pronounced is the smell of feed lots and whatever it is they have in town... maybe "manure r us" or something. Anyway, you might get used to it if you hang around a while. I'm still somewhat short of that point. The smells of the Texas Panhandle encourage the newcomer to keep on moving. See what you think:
Northeast New Mexico is a lot like the Texas Panhandle... except without all of that economic activity. We drove an hour without going through a town of more than a couple hundred people. Eventually we reached Raton, New Mexico which sits at the southern end of the Raton Pass on I-25. Historically, this is the route of the Santa Fe Trail which became active as a path from St. Joseph, Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico starting in the 1820s. Today it is a route for people from New Mexico and Texas to reach Trinidad, Colorado which, although it has a population of only 9,000 people, has five recreational marijuana dispensaries.
(A note for one faithful reader: Trinidad was founded by Felipe Baca for whom the adjacent county was named. We didn't pass through Baca County, but we got close.)
So, we headed over Raton Pass and into Trinidad. The reason this post uses the work "funky" in its title starts in Trinidad. As I noted above, Trinidad is a small town. What I didn't note above is that it's been slowly loosing population. A drive through old Trinidad shows a once prosperous town center. A touch of that prosperity still shows, but so does the surrounding poverty. Trinidad started as a mining town. No, not gold, not copper, not silver, certainly not uranium back in the day... it was coal mining. I might one day write about the ancestry research I've been doing for both Mrs. C' and me. My roots run deep in coal mining both in Pennsylvania and South Wales. I felt an immediate kinship with Trinidad when I realized the similarity of its people with mine. Digging deeper, Trinidad was the town where Bat Masterson famously acted as Marshall, it was also the home of one of the first hippie communes of the 1960's (Funky!... no, GROOVY). It was also a center of -- brace yourself -- gender reassignment surgery in the 1970's and later. I'll leave you to research that more if you want. In recent years the surgeon who put Trinidad on the map (or took it off... or at least redrew the map) sold his practice to another surgeon who moved it to California. Fitting. Clearly when we crossed the Raton Pass we entered a different place than where we had spent the past few days.
The park itself was nice enough for a one night stand (that didn't sound right... I'll have to work on my phraseology). Here's a shot of the namesake lake taken from near our campsite. Like every lake we've ever stayed at west of the Mississippi River it had a dam at one end.
On Saturday morning we jumped on I-25 to head north with plans to turn west to visit our niece and her family in Del Norte, Colorado. I-25 in the part of Colorado offers a chance to see Colorado's two halves. Most of us easterners think of Colorado as a mountainous state. Certainly, it is that. They even feature a profile of Rocky Mountain peaks in their license plates. But only half the state is mountainous. The eastern half is part of the great American plains. I-25 runs along the boundary between the two. Here's today's Silver Cliche' Driving Experience set to show what I-25 offers in the way of mountain views to the west and plains to the east:
We stopped for lunch in Walsenburg, Colorado where we hopped off I-25 to pick up US 160 heading west. TripAdvisor offered a choice of a drive in, or the restaurant in a B&B in the town center (important note: there are only two sections to Walsenburg: 1. town center and 2. out of town. The town center seemed to be about three blocks in each direction). We picked the B&B. The building appeared to have once been a commercial establishment (dry goods shop, hardware store, grocery, I don't know) but is now a small hotel. Standard fare, friendly small town service. Fuel to keep us going. Here's what "La Plaza" looked like as we wrapped up and hit the road again (it's the blue building on the left).
Another 90 minutes and we were in Del Norte. This is our second visit to this town of about 2,000. It sits in the San Luis valley which is transected by the Rio Grande River. Despite the connotations that the Rio Grande may have in other places (including the White House), here it isn't a border but it brings life to this valley. The valley is about 120 miles wide (east to west) and nearly 80 miles north to south. Del Norte (which we had to come here to learn is pronounced by the current locals as if it was an English combo -- "del nort" -- and not the way some earlier locals, or San Luis himself might have pronounced it -- "del nortay") is located on the far western end of the valley which is where the Rio Grande enters from the San Juan mountains where it's headwaters are found . The valley's most striking feature to me is the agriculture which can best be seen and appreciated from the Google Maps satellite view. Let me show you:
Here's a shot I took this morning looking north across the short end of the San Luis Valley from our parking spot just west of Del Norte.
This afternoon for yucks we drove to the nearby town of Creede. This is a former mining town (no, not coal...silver this time) on the Rio Grande about 20 miles into the San Juan mountains from the western end of the San Luis Valley. The main product is the extraction of silver (coins that is... and dollar bills too while you're at it) from the pockets of California and Texas people who want to live in an olde western town. I don't have a problem with that. Here are a couple of shots of the mining industry remnants of Creede, Colorado.
So, about that sketchy connectivity... we are out in the sticks... the population density in Del Norte is roughly equal to the Sahara or the Moon. So, with low population density comes few cell towers. This is the first time this trip we've really been out of communication. However, with a bit of technology we carry (20 foot tall telescoping antenna mast, cell phone booster and two cell phone booster antennas that attach to the mast, we are occasionally able to connect and draw enough bandwidth to reach civilization. Thanks to all of that, you are able to read all of this.
Tomorrow we roll on. We had planned to visit Pueblo, Colorado but were advised that Pueblo is the Cleveland of Colorado (I don't think they were meaning that favorably). So, we may head north to Salida -- a town we visited last year and enjoyed for a few hours -- for a night before moving on to Colorado Springs.
Stay tuned for more!
SC'
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