We woke up to a beautiful New Mexico blue sky morning, but it was already hot. It generally takes us about an hour to an hour and a half from wake up to being ready to leave. That’s how it went today. We did one last “stupid check” to make sure we didn’t forget anything. We had a little last minute chat with one of our hosts, Sue, and then it was time to head down the road.
We drove about 150 miles under the bright New Mexico hot hot sky, and then had our first stop of the day. This was a fascinating historic site. Fort Union was built right after the Mexican-American War in 1848. It was built to both protect traders on the Santa Fe Trail, and establish US presence in the new territories following the war. We had driven by the signs for this fort many times while on other trips, but today was our chance to have a look.
The fort was about 8 miles off of the main freeway, and before too long we could see what appeared to be adobe ruins on the horizon. There had been three different forts built in this area, all out of adobe. The remains here were from the third version. It was our good fortune that we happened to arrive on a weekend where there were historical reenactors present. As we were getting out of our car we heard the boom of a cannon. We were able to rush over and see a squad of reenactor troops who explained and demonstrated how these pre-Civil War cannons worked. It was quite a complex process, but very impressive. The reenactors were spending the weekend at the fort sharing their knowledge of the uniforms, tents, and weaponry.
Dick also struck up quite a fascinating conversation with one of the regular park rangers who was also in the uniform of a private of the era. The ranger was able to give us some really quick high points about what made the fort so special. One of the fascinating things he talked about was how normally when canvas-covered freight wagons were in wagon trains, they didn’t go single file, as looks like they do in the movies. Rather they lined up for six maybe even 10 a breast, riding next to each other. When they arrived on the horizon of Fort Union, there was somebody in the equivalent of an air traffic control tower who could see the dust of the wagons coming and deployed some men on horses to go and direct each wagon to get into single file so the person on the top of the building could tell them where they needed to go to unload their freight. Some were directed beyond the fort where traders were waiting for their goods. We were fascinated by this.
It was also at this site the largest hospital between Kansas and the west coast (at its peak having 120 beds) was located. There were so many fascinating, fascinating things to see and learn at this site, but we only had a little over a little over an hour’s worth of time today. We had longingly at the group of visitors heading off on a tour… but we had to go, deciding we would stop again on a future trip and allow more time.
We needed to head up the road because we were soon crossing into Colorado and then headed up through lots of traffic and construction all the way to just south of Denver. Then we turned west and headed up into the mountains where we were going to visit our dear friend, Jenny, in her home in Evergreen Colorado.
The trip took longer than we wished. But, we were warmly greeted by Jenny and she had wonderful food prepared for us. So we had a feast which included shrimp, salmon, amazing salad and homemade ice cream. We both ate and ate and ate. We love visiting people who are good cooks. And then we talked late into the night catching up on each others lives and travels and pondering our life changes. It was a great great visit. But, finally we all had to go to bed. We were so glad to be in Colorado, having left some of the terrible heat behind. There was a crisp pine smell in the air and the temperature was in the 60s. Ahh. We would really enjoy our time in Colorado.
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