Monday May 16th- Capulin Volcano, Trinidad Colorado and the Highway of Legends

Thankfully, the weather cleared this morning, and it was and is a bright sunshiny beautiful day, temps in the lower 70's to high 60's, depending on how high we were today.

We got up early this morning, and got on the road by 0815... 
Our list of stops today was:  The Ludlow Memorial on I-25, Capulin Volcano NM in New Mexico, then back up to the city of Trinidad, Colorado, for a couple of stamp stops, then we decided to take one of Colorado's scenic drives home to Walsenburg, called the Highway of Legends, or Colorado 12, which was well worth the trip. 

The Ludlow Memorial is at the site of an old mining camp from 1914, and was the scene of a bloody riot, which involved the United Mine Workers and their demands for unionization for workers in the mines in the area,.  During the "massacre", 19 folks died, including several children-  The monument is to these folks.  There were some ruins across the road, which we took to be remains from the camp, maybe not. 

Here is a photo from the Wiki site that shows what the site looked like after the riot:

Here are the ruins across the road from the monument-  Here's the Wiki Site if you would like to learn more:  I remember teaching this in high school history classes, but it was different visiting the actual site..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

Then, we headed on into New Mexico for a trip to the Capulin Volcano National Monument-  This is an inactive volcano, that erupted maybe 56,000 years ago or so.  It's inactive now, and the neat thing is you can actually drive up to the top of the volcano, well, almost to the top, on a narrow 2 lane road, and then climb up to the summit.   We started to climb, but Bette got pooped. The vistas from the summit were awesome, views for miles and miles of not much!

This shows the road we took!!

Nice shot, we're looking good!

Two views of the vistas from the parking lot at the top..

From there, we backtracked to the town of Trinidad, Colorado, which was on the list for two stamp locations-  We stopped in at a very busy Subway for lunch, then headed a couple of blocks over to downtown and parked, and found a neat antique store, Bette found a nice gift for our New Hampshire friend, and then we went next door to a Goodwill type bazaar store, and she found a book, and I found a pair of cowboy boots!  Wasn't especially looking for them, but there they were, they are perfect, because they are not pointy toed, and they fit very well-  polished them up when I got back and sprayed them with athlete's foot spray, so I'm set to be Western now.... 

I stepped down to the Baca House museum, and got my Spanish Trail and Baca House stamp, but no pin...  nice folks in the bookstore...

We next headed over to Trinidad Lake State Park, where there was supposed to be another Spanish Trail Stamp, but it was not to be found.  I did get two other stamps that were supposed to be there, one for the Park itself for the Colorado State Park Passport book, and a bonus stamp of the Lake outline. 

We were on the Highway of Legends anyway, so off we went, taking the long way home, to spectacular back country scenery, lots of old buildings falling in, some wildlife, and awesome views. 

This is pretty much the route we took today:

We got up as high as 11,000 feet, with views of the Sangre de Christo mountains, which had a fresh coat of snow on them from yesterday-  breathtaking!