Traveling-with-TLC

April 29: Pagosa Springs to John Martin State Park, CO

Colorado is a beautiful state. We had only traveled about 10 minutes out of Pagosa Springs before I insisted on a photo stop. What majestic scenery!

We stopped at Treasure Falls to learn the limits of our hiking ability at 8500 feet elevation: about a quarter of a mile. You never heard such huffing and puffing!

We crested the Continental Divide at 10,856 feet. It seemed a little anti-climatic for a bucket-list event! We just took a picture from the car and continued on to the Great Plains.

At least, that’s what we thought. The terrain was level, the wind was blowing, we had expansive views…but wait, why are there snow capped mountains in front of us? It turns out we were just in a high mountain valley and had one more pass to go over. Eventually we did end up on the plains.

Just before the east border of Colorado, we checked into our campsite at John Martin State Park. It was a very birdy place so we enjoyed watching our avian neighbors.

These are some stock images of a few of the birds we saw. There were upwards of 200 phalaropes. We also saw Dowitchers, Yellow-legs sp, Ruddy ducks, Yellow-headed Blackbirds, White-crowned sparrows, Sage Thrasher, etc. etc.