An Eventful Day

U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO

It was a bright and clear day when we left this morning and drove south along the the eastern side of the Rockies.  We couldn't have asked for a nicer travel day!  

The view of the Academy from I-25 was so pretty that I couldn't resist trying to capture it from the moving car. 

After we left Colorado Springs we were in "virgin territory" as Roger put it.  We had never been on this particular route or seen any of this part of the country before.   One of the sites we saw was this butte with Trinidad, CO at its foot.  The rest area where we stopped for lunch had a wonderful view!  From there we climbed Raton Pass and at the top found ourselves in New Mexico.  

On this trip we have followed parts of the Oregon Trail, the California Trail, the Morman Trail, the Pony Express Route, Lewis and Clark's route.  Today we found ourselves on the Santa Fe Trail and Route 66.  

Then, about 60 miles from our destination the biggest "event" of the day happened:   

Yep, we hit a milestone!!  We figure that  at least 85% of these miles has been pulling an RV back and forth across the country!  (This trip alone will be about 4,000 miles by the time we get home.) What journeys they have been!!  With any luck we will see many more miles on "Ole Blue."  

At one stop in the last few weeks, a neighbor said to Roger, "That sure is a nice wagon you've got, but it is a tired old horse pulling it." Well, it's going to continue pulling for a while longer!



After one of our longer drives, we stopped for the night in Las Vegas.  According to the brochure this Las Vegas in New Mexico was the first one and is quite famous for having famous residents and visitors including  Doc Holliday, Big Nose Kate, Jesse James and Teddy Roosevelt announced his candidacy for president here.   The KOA is not one of the nicer ones but we got the best site with no one next to us. 

We did finally see antelope today!!  A whole herd of pronghorns. The land we passed through today was mainly large ranches with cattle and horses.  We saw no agriculture. One ranch we passed, called the "Fire and Ice" ranch, was absolutely huge. Western ranches erect grand entrances displaying the name of the ranch wherever a road entered the ranches' property. Entrances to this ranch went on for probably 10 to 15 miles as we drove by on Highway 25.  A single family has owned this land since 1916 in the business of "quality" beef for America. This is really the soul of the western identity.

Maggie let us sleep last night (maybe we finally figured out the real culprit for her discomfort) and she had some nice naps today in the truck (her happy pill worked!).  

Tomorrow we have a very short day to Santa Fe where we plan on spending three nights.  We need to get an oil change and we hope to spend a day in Los Alamos and a day in old town Santa Fe.