In life it's not where you go but who you are with……Charles Shultz
Vagabond Tales- Linda Said There’d Be Days Like This
April 17, 2021. Hooper, Colorado
Heard this was an outstanding stop so we worked it into our trip. Glad we did!Took the trail up to Fort Bent. La Junta , Colorado. Check out those clouds!I may not have brought a coat warm enough! Thankful for toboggans!This fellow brought us inside to give us the run down of the fort and warm us up.
The cool thing about him is he started using sign language to talk to us and looked directly at Harry the whole time. I thought perhaps he knew Harry had hearing aides and maybe he did but the Native Americans used a sign language to trade and we were in the mercantile.
Bent Old Fort was one of the significant centers for the fur trade on the Santa Fe Trail. Charles and William Bent and partner Ceran St.Vrain became one of the pillars of the fur industry 1830-1840’s.
Settlers, soldiers and native Americans alike traded and did business here.They had fires going in several of the rooms and it was surprisingly warm.We went around the livestock and found this team being hooked up.They had some renegade peacocks and chickens running loose outside of the pens so Onyx had to stay in the car.We climbed up to the second floor and that is about when we realized those clouds were full of the white stuff ( Maybe you can see the flakes against my coat.) and we needed to hustle back to the car since we had several more hours ahead of us!This guy met us at the bottom of the stairs and wanted to share stories… we stayed for a bit to be polite but as you can see the snow was coming down harder.
The next few hours were nail biters! Our friend Linda, who owns a condo in Golden, Colorado along with her husband, Mike, asked me what Harry was thinking going to Colorado this early when I shared our itinerary with her. I told her, he had done the research and we were going the best months for seeing animals and spring growth. She responded with, “ Don’t be surprised if you see some snow.” Well we were forewarned. Linda said there’d be days like this!
The snow fog was the bad thing about this because you really couldn’t tell how far you were into the pass or how much you had left.It felt good to get out of the snow and look back at the snow covered mountains.Cheeseburger soup for dinner! And now to rest.
****Stand-by for our first contest of the trip tomorrow at our first National Park of the trip.
hkdorr 
I am learning so much from your travels. Have fun and be safe! Love you!
Are you still at the beach?
Brrr! Looks cold. The picture of that guy who you stopped to talk to should be a painting. Classic. Maybe Ashley would do it???
I haven’t seen any of her paintings for a while!