 |
| Nearing Trinidad and the New Mexico border |
The road south beckoned. I had to get out. I had been idle for an unhealthy stretch. Sometimes I barely go two months without an oil change. This year, weather and work woes had me pushing toward six.
Every attempt from January to March stalled from winter weather. If snow fell Friday and the temperatures only warmed up marginally, all turned to ice. But I had to go somewhere. Too many weekends passed without a trip anywhere in 2025. Not since I slipped back from Kansas three days after Christmas had I entered another state.
Easter lined up for a day trip. Even if I did something that skirted close to tradition, it would ease my lack of travel. Plus, some news outside my life was coming – it was good news for those involved, but news that dredge up memories I thought long buried. Sometimes there exists no bigger troll than my own brain. We waste too much gray matter on irrelevant memories and have no good way to purge them.
But I digress in the name of the road. I left early, with the Easter churchgoers just venturing out. Armed only with a 7-11 coffee, I took off. The road blurred past. Construction closures I dreaded had opened again.
 |
| Pikes Peak when I left Easter morning |
 |
| Spanish Peaks from the road |
Hungry as I was, only one stop sufficed. The Oasis Restaurant and Hotel stands sentinel near the south end of Raton’s I-25 Business Loop. It’s one of those IFYKYK kind of haunts – an inauspicious diner attached to an old hotel that serves unforgettable food. After nearly a dozen visits in five years, I have never had a bad meal there.
Before I could even finish that I had a hard time choosing between a breakfast burrito and the stuffed sopapilla, the teenage waiter jumped in. “You want the stuffed sopa.”
Did I ever – sausage, egg and cheese in that perfect pastry, drenched in homemade red New Mexican chile. The boulder might have rolled back on Easter, but I was in heaven. I savored the sopapilla, so much more delicate than a tortilla when under a layer of chile. New Mexican cuisine just tastes better south of the pass.
I had a choice of seats when I arrived. By the time I left, a line queued out the front door, most patrons dressed in their Easter best. I took a slow roll through Raton, where hardly anything was open this early on a Sunday. I drove on city streets as far north as I could before being forced to rejoin the interstate. Back in Colorado, I felt a need for some more time among the natural wonders.
The snowy peaks of the Sangre de Cristo glistened in later morning, so much that I could not watch them as I descended the pass back to Trinidad.West of the interstate, little neighborhood churches had a steady trickle of parishioners.
I focused elsewhere. I spotted a dead tuxedo cat on the business highway that forms the Highway of Legends. Despite the lump that developed in my throat, I couldn’t safely stop to remove it from the road.
Before venturing too far north, I needed a patch of solitude in Trinidad Lake State Park. I crossed the dam that forms the lake from the Purgatoire River (also called the Picketwire) for another short hike. Some early wildflowers unfurled. Insects were light but ready for a 70-degree day.
The reservoir sits in an enviable spot, below a series of intimidating mountains – mesa-topped Fishers Peak to the southeast, with the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountain range running to its west. Snow-capped and mostly triangular, only a few drivable gaps exist for several hundred miles in the range that includes several Colorado 14’ers and New Mexico’s tallest mountain, Wheeler Peak. South of the lake in Longs Canyons, you can evidence of the iridium layer – the meteor collision that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That will wait for a future trip.
Standing below these comforting mountains brought me the solace I needed from a little trip to the Colorado-New Mexico border.
 |
| Fishers Peak above Trinidad Lake |
 |
| Sangre de Cristo from Trinidad Lake |
No comments:
Post a Comment