Day tour today, to La Junta and back

This morning, we got up at 8 after mostly a sleepless night, because the coach was rocked solid for most of the night with 30-50 mph steady winds.. We decided to go ahead and head the 25 miles over to John Martin Resevoir and see if we could get in. Well, turns out we could, at the time there was us and 1 other camper in the place. We got a protected campground, right next to the bathhouse (pay showers!) with 50 amp, but no water! I forgot to check that out, and certainly heard about it from the co driver.


After showering and cleaning up, we decided to go ahead and go to our local objectives for this stop today, and use tomorrow as a rest and planning day for the rest of our time here in Colorado. Done. About 90 mile round trip, in which we first went to Boggsville Historical Site, for a Santa Fe Trail Stamp, then to Bent's Old Fort National Historical Site, our 121st National Park, then over to La Junta Colorado, for a stop at the Amtrak station for a stamp that wasn't there, then to the Cimarron Grasslands office for a bonus stamp from their area and another Santa Fe Trail Stamp. 

The Boggsville Historical Site is a not for profit site that features the rebuilt home of a local settler, which was a waystop for those traveling on the Santa Fe Trail.  The fellow who was the caretaker was about to grill some hamburgers it looked like for lunch, but was very accomodating, and showed us through the place, and did know about the stamp program, which was another bonus.  They had a bonus stamp of the house, and two different Santa Fe Trail stamps.

Well worth the visit, and it was free

From there, we headed over to Bent's Old Fort National Historical Site, near the town of Las Animas, Colorado, our 121st National Park site.  This was an old fort built in the lower 1800's, and served as a trading post, Indian protection fort, until it burned down in the later 1800's.  The NPS meticulously rebuilt it using plans drawn in 1830 something, and it stands today.  They did a fabulous job.  Many of the rooms are restored to how they looked in the day, and there was an excellent store, got a pin. 

I watched a 20 minute movie about the history of the fort, and Bette took some nice pictures, including one that we will use as our new header shot for this year.

As you can notice in the photo, the American Flag is flying straight out, while we were in the fort, the winds started picking up again, and by the time we left, they were blowing 30-50 mph continuously, as they are doing as I type this two hours later... we are totally buttoned up, more later in the post.. 

Well, actually now... the skies started to lower and it got really cloudy, which it is as I type, but no major rain just yet... 

Here's what it looked like as we drove back to John Martin:

And here was the local weather as I was typing this,

We think its much cooler than 72, the car thermometer said 63 on the way home, it shows winds of 25 mph we think they are much stronger in gusts, and showing an overnite low tonite of 42, and then 38 tomorow, then 37 the next day.. Yikes!

Here's what the radar photo shows: 

No rain near us, we're just to the left of Lamar, about 40 miles West.  The map just showed the temperature to be 61, so it keeps cooling off.  Still lots of snow in the mountains west of Denver it looks like... 

Had a good tour day today, short drive too.  Tomorrow is a complete off/rest/do laundry/ plan for Walsenburg, Monument/Colorado Springs/Denver and Rocky Mountain National Park day, may watch a couple of ballgames on tv, if we can put the antenna back up, right now, we are  totally buttoned up tight, as I said earlier,  the slide outs are in, the antenna is down.  Winds still blowing mightily. 

Hear today grandson Cooper is getting upper Braces in a couple of weeks, good luck buddy!