Trinidad Lake Campground, CO.

Carol, Migual, Chriss

Hello again:

Well today we finally started making progress again. We left the Corral Campground after a very nice stay with temperatures about 95*F. The best part was they even had WiFi for me. We got our tire fixed quickly at Dalhart Consumer Fuel by Migual. It was his brother George who helped us out yesterday and who told us to come back today. They both are very nice young men, friendly, and polite and prompt. When Chriss and I are together we seem to always meet such nice interesting people.

Then off we went westward still very warm sunny weather. We traveled some very interesting terrain from Texas to New Mexico. The terrian was flat but our GPS showed it to be very high. Awhile ago we wrote regarding Mt. Mitchell although in the mountains we said, "just wait" till you see the high flat "west." We saw mostly farm land planted in crop circles with watering equipment on wheels that circled within the field with the center attached to a well. These irrigation devises were Huge!

There were many grain silos for storing the crops and trains to transport the crops to sell. Those Texans are right, everything here is "BIG" the fields, crops, silos even the small towns had super wide main streets (five lanes in one town). See our pictures.

While were enjoying the scenery in New Mexico we weren't aware at how much we had climbed in altitude because the terrain appeared flat as far as we could see. No Blue Ridge Parkway or Smokie mountains to see, just flat land. To our amazement we were at 7030 ft (beat you NC, VA, TN). We laughed as we were higher in New Mexico at 7030 feet than we were in the mountains on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Mt. Mitchell which is 6800 feet.

While we were admiring the scenery the clouds began to gather and it started to rain part way though NM. These clouds were big and nasty looking but only rained with a little lightning. Those clouds sure did look threatening which reminded us of our weather delay starting this trip. Then we crossed into Colorado and the hills and scenery changed amazingly fast, high rocky mountains with mostly evergreens, very pretty. We looked to our left and partway up a mountain on a ledge were two very large black bears, I mean large.

We checked our Good Sam campground book and found Trinidad Lake Campground located in a State Park. In the park office it was Virginia, a very nice lady who checked us in to our campsite. She was so very helpful and pleasant to deal with. She was new and had to ask her superior questions over the radio while trying so hard to help us, even though she had to deal with a rough gruff ranger voice giving directions on the radio. We found at another park that not all Colorado Rangers are , well, mean.

We were assigned a great campsite (thanks Virginia). Chriss took my hand as he was showing me the sights. This is when we met our neighbors, the Andrews family, while holding hands. What a nice family, David and Karla and their children, Alyse, Kayla, Ethan, Seth, and Abby. A pleasure to be around. Chriss says this was his high point in our entire trip. The boys made a camp fire and they invited us over for their specialty “campfire cakes” which were absolutely yummy. They used special hamburger grilling pans to hold buttered bread (top and bottom) with a cherry pie filling, held over the fire until toasted and warm. Now that is a campfire treat! Later David showed Chriss his telescope and set it up to see Jupiter with its rings and 5 of its moons. The outside temperature at 12:00 midnight is 62 and we were wearing sweaters and sweat pants to keep warm. It is getting cool so it is time to call it a day. A nice warm bed sounds very tempting.

Good night to all,
Carol & Chriss