Grasslands Sojourn

Though there are bits and piece left undisclosed from our Spanish adventure I’m tapped out on the subject for now.  It’s time to move on to new victims and fresh locales. So there’ll be no more Spain till I’ve returned to the scene of the crime. And, yes friends and neighbors, that’s a done deal.  I’m tagging on an eighteen day hopscotch of the Iberian Peninsula in late September just after our two weeks in the south of France. Can’t promise a faithful reprise of the May trip.  I'll start in Barcelona but who in the world knows where inclination and serendipity will lead?

Nearer to home I took a two day jaunt to the Amache Relocation Camp by way of the grasslands of northeastern New Mexico and bookended the camp with a long intended visit to Old Bent’s Fort near La Junta, Colorado. It was a highly condensed road trip in which I left on a Thursday mid-afternoon and was back for some good Guadalajara Grill Friday night. Let’s just say there were more driving hours than photographic ones and that I relished both.

For what it’s worth, not all of these disparate subjects will make this post.  We’ll just see where this goes.  Don’t ask me, I’m just the typist.

Since I had been intrigued by Capulin Volcano near tiny Capulin and barely larger Des Moines, New Mexico and because I could plot a path to La Junta by way of Capulin that’s the route I picked.  Just past Raton the land turned earnestly pastoral and the volcano loomed above the plains.  Alas, the Capulin Volcano National Monument has closed for the day.  It was just after 5PM and that’s the kind of result you’ll get when you’re planning averse and can’t tell time.

All was far from lost however and the Comanche National Grassland gave up a three old homesteads that grace these pages today.