John Farley Overlook

Up on top of Cuchara Pass is a Forest Road/County Road that goes through the San Isabel National Forest.  We drove part way to see how the road was and came to this overlook.  You can almost look down and see the small town of Cuchara but not quite.   All around the overlook were these irises blooming.  Not sure if they are wild since the area has been disturbed.  There are yellow dandelions everywhere along with the blue irises so it was a very pretty picture. 

The road just got rougher from there so we thought we would come back and try using the 4 wheeler to go through the forest.  We seem to be able to get out sightseeing once a week even though we have three days off.  One day we have to do errands and at least one day the weather is bad either rain or wind.  Overall its been nice as far as the temps go staying in the 70's and low 80's.  The only bummer is when it rains it tends to hail but so far its only been pea sized.

Little Kansas

We took another 4 wheeler trip through beautiful mountain meadows.  We followed one road through a very narrow canyon with a nice creek running through it and these old cabins.   There were cabins squeezed into every space.  They call this area little Kansas because a group from Kansas settled this area.  The cabins are very rustic looking but fairly sturdy.  They all have fireplaces and even in June they had fires going.  It stays very cool in this canyon and most of the cabins don't get much sun.  Most of the cabins had cute names like Akins Alcove, Holts Hideaway, etc. 

We are enjoying our stay here for the summer and dream about having a place in a mountain meadow with beautiful mountain views.  It's amazing how many homes are built out in the middle of the foothills and on the mountains themselves and somehow they all seem to have power running to them and most have fiberoptic cable run as well.  Of course, water and sewer are another issue.  We aren't sure how they cope with that situation.  The Little Kansas community had water from the creek and power but we didn't see any septic systems or outhouses so not sure how they managed their waste. 

Rock Formations

We did some more 4 wheeling around La Veta.  There are interesting rock formations in the area.  The rock "wall" in the top picture is called a dyke and there are several around the Spanish Peaks.   These dykes were formed about 65 million years ago when the tectonic  plates moved and pushed these walls up out of the earth.  The bottom picture is a gorge or canyon wall and this area is known as lovers leap.  You have to have one of those around wherever we travel. 

It took us about three hours to ride the county roads that we wanted to follow and on the way back we hit rain.  We were glad we had added a roof and windshield to our 4 wheeler because it actually tried to hail on us.  We got back to the campground and there was a flash flood alert.  If it rained too much and too hard there was a chance the river going past the campground could flood.  There was a huge fire here last year and it left the mountain sides to the west bare and the ground like cement.  If too much runoff occurs it could easily flood the valley.  They aren't expecting anything bad until the monsoon season in August so we will keep our fingers crossed.