Wednesday 28 May
Trip Start
Apr 13, 2008
1
51
155
Trip End
Oct 27, 2008
Lamar,
Colorado,
United States
Monday, June 9, 2008
We got up and left about 8 am and headed for a small National Park called Bents Old Fort. This turned out to be one of the most interesting places we have visited yet. It is located on the famous Santa Fe Trail near Las Animas in Eastern Colorado.
It was built along the trail in the mid 1800's by Mr Bent , close to the Mexican border near the river as a refuge and trading post for people using the trail and to trade for buffalo skins with the Indians and white trappers. Also the military used it as a place to recuperate.
Built of adobe bricks and plaster it looked very Mexican. Unfortunately it didn't survive over the years but excavation work this century unearthed all the foundations of the whole fort. Fortunately for the archaeologists they also had the original documents from a man who had stayed at the fort for 6 weeks while he was recovering from heat exhaustion and had carefully and accurately drawn a map of the fort complete with the dimensions of all the buildings, who occupied each building and what it was used for.
So in the 1970's the national Park service had the whole place rebuilt in exactly the same spot with exactly the same materials and have recreated it for people to come and visit..It was fascinating - especially the tour which was conducted by a a man in full period costume. He was brilliant and made the tour for us.
It was very hot here so we had lunch in the cool van and then we left. Oh and the kids did another junior ranger badge and learned heaps.
We didn't travel much further as it was already 3pm so we stopped in Lamar in another Walmart CarPark. We did our usual shopping for supplies and parked along side 4 other RV's . it felt good to be there with other people who also were there for the night.
It was getting very windy so we decidedto park in front of an obscenely large RV to get some protection from the wind. As we parked a little VW like Steve's old one re-parked in front of us - thinking we might give him some protection too. It was quite funny seeing us all lined up, end to end, in size order!
