Pictures From Our Colorado & New Mexico Trip, September 2007
In eastern Colorado, wind power is a big thing. So are the windmills.
Lamar's visitor center has this turbine rotor on display:
Another view of this 110-foot-long monster. Turbines use three rotors. I wonder: do they bolt them together on the ground,
or atop the tower, more than two hundred feet in the air?
Lamar's visitor center also has signs about the city's history. Before
the white man arrived, great cottonwood trees lined the river
for many miles. In time, the trees were gone and the land was deeply rutted by the wheels of wagons along the Santa Fe Trail.
Lamar's founding was jump-started with the spirit of can-do optimism and not a little chicanery:
A dark chapter in the nation's history concerns the internment of people of Japanese descent during the Second World War. One of
the internment camps was built a few miles from Lamar:
As one proceeds west on US50 from Pueblo and Canon City, the road hugs the bank of the Arkansas River:
In Norman, real estate developers give projects fanciful names like "aspen bluff," but Colorado actually has them:
The road does some serious climbing west of Salida. This business has been perched atop Monarch Pass, on the Continental
Divide, for more than fifty years. We spent a little money there.
A dam on the Arkansas created Blue Mesa Lake, Colorado's largest:
In Montrose, a peaceful roadside picnic, accompanied by the whispers of an Aspen's shimmering leaves.
South of Montrose, the road becomes seriously mountainous. Ouray nestles into a narrow valley:
The road south from Ouray is called the "million dollar highway." I think that understates the replacement cost:
Traveling this road in the winter months must be challenging: Is that man-made tunnel meant to protect against rock slides? Or
snow avalanches? Or both?
In New Mexico we reached flat land -- good for fast travel, bad for scenery. But we spotted a modest sign that announced a
campsite with "scenic view" was just a quarter-mile off the highway. We drove down a bumpy gravel road and found --
-- a surprise. Until one got to the rim, there was no hint that this was nearby.
Colorado and New Mexico are blessed with many grand vistas. Some, like this, are not famous but just serendiptious discoveries
that one encounters roaming across the region. But all serve to remind us of our humble place in the Cosmos.
