October 10-16, 2002 - Colorado

On October 10 we drove from Garden City, KS to La Junta, CO.  La Junta doesn't look much different than Kansas, being just a bit higher in elevation.  We drove around the area and the neighboring town to Rocky Ford, since Bill used to subscribe to an engineering magazine out of Rocky Ford.  This is melon growing country, but we missed that season. 

While driving the next day we got our call back from National RV and arranged our factory visit for the middle of December in Perris, CA.  This would put us 65 miles from Diane's sisters house right around Christmas, so we knew we had another long trip this year.

On the 11th we drove to the eastern outskirts of Colorado Springs to visit with Liz and Annie.  We had known Liz for many years and she had recently moved here so we were invited to stay a few days in the driveway:

Liz and Mara were good friends, so it was hard on Liz to hear about Mara since Liz had been looking forward to seeing Mara.  But there were plenty of furry friends here.

Annie is into horses, so there is land for the horses and here is a shot of the house and barn and one of the horses:

We were at 7000 feet and even in early October it could get cold at night, one night was 19 degrees.  It was sunny and in the 60s during the day.  Here is the view looking west from the house at Pikes Peak, which has no snow left since it was a dry year:

Here are a couple of the cats that own the place:

We think the second one is Momma, who is famous for when she decided the rats in the barn had to go.  She spent the day in the barn killing rats and once she was done they didn't have any more rats. 

Their standard poodle, Chip, and Bill hit it off and were best buddies.  Annie was surprised since Chip normally doesn't like men.  Here are some shots of Chip:

Annie had a knee injury, but was still working at home as much as possible and Liz was also busy with computer configuration and some remodeling.  We had a lot of free time to visit the local area.  One day we visited Garden of the Gods, these few pictures do not do it justice:

Another day we drove west a bit and had this view:

Then we went to Cave of the Winds, which was a decent cave but too commercial:

Once done with the cave we visited the local cliff dwellings museum, where both the cliff dwellings and plant descriptions were interesting:

Annie treated us to Sunday lunch at an excellent Irish pub in Colorado Springs. 

We had a good visit and headed off to Santa Fe, NM on the 16th.

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