Moving east . . . ever so slowly August 4, 2009

The crack of 8:45 a.m.: our hatches are battened, all is packed and we’re off. Once again over Wolf Creek Pass and down the other side. The down part is what gets my attention. It makes me a tad nervous, but as always, all is good. There is a bicycle rally happening here. Scores of cyclists are climbing the pass from the east. It is beyond me that there can be that many people who are not only willing, but capable of pulling that grade. I have no idea how long their course is, but we’re far down from the summit and still they’re coming.

Is this Wolf Creek that our route has followed or is it the south fork of the Rio Grande or something else entirely? At any rate, it reminds me of childhood road trips to northern California. Occasionally (I think before we were seven in number), we would rent a cabin for the night and it would look over one of the multitude of that country’s water courses. I loved falling asleep to the sound of the rushing river, and still love driving or hiking by them.

Down here on the other side of the pass, the vegetation is much changed. Although we are 1,000 feet higher than the Pagosa side, we are in pinion/juniper country much like home (information from E.P., encyclopedic partner).

As we spy the cool old steam train water tower that we remember from the past, I am inclined to stop for a photo. While risking life and limb (only a slight exaggeration) by the side of the road, I also photograph the railroad equipment on an abandoned track. There is a small engine, possibly a switcher, that is identified as belonging to Amalgamated Sugar Co. Chris, aka E.P., says that it’s too cold to grow much here besides potatoes, their historical crop, but opines that perhaps they were also successful with sugar beets. There is a passenger car from the Santa Fe line and others marked as Southern Coastal line.

San Luis Valley, Fort Garland, Kit Carson . . .
As we enter the San Luis Valley, we drive through nice ranchland, and Chris’ observation about potato farming is evident, but it appears that it may no longer be a crop here. The evidence of its previous existence is in the derelict adobe sod-roofed potato cellars, or, more likely, it remains a viable crop but storage methods have evolved.

This is one of the greatest examples of an artesian basin in the U.S. Because the ground is so porous, most of the streams that enter it lose their water, which then percolates to the center of the valley where it is available as artesian water that comes to the surface under its own pressure, requiring no pumping. The Rio Grande is the only water that continues on through and past the valley.

Driving through Monte Vista, we are charmed by the well-kept historical residential and downtown. Seems a nice place to live if only it weren’t so blasted cold.

Our destination is Alamosa, where we will experience the Great Sand Dunes. Chris’ idea, it sounded too bleak for me after the Pagosa area, but he convinced me that it will be fascinating and interesting. Ah, we have now seen potatoes growing, so the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee building in Del Norte begins to fit into the picture.

We are now parked at the KOA just outside Alamosa. Not much of a driving day, we were here by midday, but we made up for it by dropping the Totee and driving out to Fort Garland, traversing the San Luis Valley on a loop route.

Fort Garland was not one that had ever come into my awareness; however, the word “fort” is always a catcher for me and we were not sorry we made the trip. It was the last command of Kit Carson’s. He died the following year. As I perused photographs of him, it was obvious that he became, or was ill at the time he commanded Fort Garland. The portraits of him that year show him as much more gaunt than anything before that time.

The fort and museum were interesting and educational. I learned that he married a Hispanic girl (I must use that particular term; she was 14; he was 33) from an affluent Taos family. They maintained a home in Taos, but he was necessarily away from there a good deal of the time, and she often accompanied him with their children. I will have to do a bit of research, though, to figure out their children. It seemed from what we read that there were eight; however, most blurbs referred to seven, one of which died in infancy. I presume the infant death occurred at the childbirth which brought about Josefa Jaramillo Carson’s demise several days afterward. Carson died a month later.

Amazingly, he maintained his position as Brigadier General in the U.S. Army even though he was illiterate, but spoke five languages. A fascinating person he must have been. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to meet him and hear about his life!

Evidently, Carson also had two Indian wives with a child by each, but information about them and their possible survival or identification was non-existent in the museum. The more ya know, the more ya don’t know, eh?

Don’t know much about Alamosa; we did drive over to San Luis, allegedly the oldest town in Colorado, 1858 (this would of course refer arrogantly to the oldest Anglo settlement). It is a small depressed array of dwellings with a few businesses.

The San Luis Valley is impressively huge, ringed by Colorado’s ceaseless ranges, on the north and east the Sangre de Cristo mountains with ten 14ers, those peaks that demand climbers to attempt them, and on the west by the San Juans (that we left this morning) with one 14er. We looked up at Culebra (the southernmost 14er) and Blanca peaks, both sporting snow at this late date.

Amazing to think that we are at 7,600 feet elevation, higher than Arizona’s Flagstaff with the largest ponderosa forest in the world, but the valley is filled with sage, rabbit brush and the like because of less rainfall, approximately the same as Phoenix. The difference is the groundwater that one sees surfacing throughout the area, much of the agriculture is sub-irrigated or watered with artesian wells. The crops appear to be almost exclusively hay, grain and potatoes, the cold (down to 51 below zero) winters and short season being the reasons.

Surprisingly (at least to me), there is a burgeoning Amish population in the area, many of whom evidently are known for their building skills, and who have been welcomed into the area as they move west like so many before them to escape crowded conditions.

Once again, rain has found us. For crying out Pete’s sake, if I’ve gotten myself to a place of little precipitation, you’d think we could put out the awning, lay down the rugs (I call them my patio and my lawn) and relax outside with my little token candle alight, but no, the wind got itself up to the point we had to retire inside to escape blowing wet and to take up the awning lest it become tattered. Once was more than enough for that.

Best RVer’s t-shirt: Home is where you hook up.