Reluctantly leaving Starlite Classic Campground in Royal Gorge we scooted down the hill through Canon City and on to Pueblo where we turned south on I-25 and slowly climbed up to Trinidad, CO. We exited the freeway following the signs to Trinidad Lake State Park and found possibly the most circuitous route feasible to get to the park. We actually were required to turn left more than four times in rapid succession and ended up almost exactly where we started but no closer to the lake. After some more zigzagging we escaped downtown Trinidad and headed west on CO-12. After just a few miles we pulled into the state park and made the obligatory stop at the Ranger station where we parted with $54 for a two-night stay.
The Rangerette working the desk sold us a spot that was allegedly 65 feet long but there are retaining walls with curb stops they assume you will butt your trailer tires against. Our beloved Barbarian Invader trailer has axles about mid-length so if you back our trailer in so that the tires touch the curb stops, the access door at the back of our trailer would only be about 6′ off the ground. Watch out, honey! Ahhhthump!
We only took two hours to travel the required distance today so we had time for exploring before dark. We popped down the hill to Trinidad and found some very nice historic buildings situated right next to city sections in their death throes. We drove down Main Street and we had gone about 4 blocks before it got ugly. We ended up in a giant graveyard where we drove around a bit to fulfill Peggy’s morbid and disgusting yearnings to observe the final resting places of complete strangers. There were a bunch of dead strangers all over the place. Nobody we know.
We went to a McDonald’s to get wi-fi access because this part of the world has no bars or G’s over the air and state parks don’t have wi-fi. We finally were able to establish rudimentary, sloth-like communications through Mickey D’s wi-fi where we found out we cannot make any New Mexico state park reservations because they insist they need 14 days previous notice to allow the state park system to give notice to all interested parties in case anybody wants to start a filibuster. We will arrive in New Mexico in two days. We were able to make an RPI reservation for a park near Albuquerque 9/25 to 10/8/15. They will notify us by email if the reservation works out within 72 hours. Unfortunately, as soon as we left McDonald’s, we were back in incommunicado mode so I suppose we will be required to return to Ronald’s weird house if we wish to receive any emails. I hate the horrible phone service we have. It renders the phone a brick.
We took a short side trip to a place on CO-12 called Cokedale. It is rumored to be an historic town and, if having a bunch of old buildings makes a place historic, then we were in the right spot. As we left Cokedale after our 5 minute reconnaissance we spotted long, curved lines of connected archways made from concrete. We speculated about what they might be and ended up confused. We’ll ask around.