June 5th and 6th. - New Mexico and Colorado

desert, desert, desert, oh, wait... MOUNTAINS!!!

We stopped for the night just along the AZ/NM border.  In the morning we stopped to refresh at a rest stop.  Many plaques here talking about pioneers, and women of Native descent who helped build the west.  We had a great sunrise and picked up our first New Mexico geocache finds.  We drove on through the morning.  Lots of desert, but nicer than to the south, I think.  We made a left turn at Albuquerque and headed north.  The ground rose above us and we were soon travelling up the Colorado Rockies towards Denver.

We stopped for lunch at Dave and Judy's.  It was a nice visit with them.  We left and drove on.  We wanted to get to France and Francine's up in Golden before it got too late.  Once we were up there, we stumbled around with GPS failing due to the high mountain walls around up and Francine on the phone.  We found their road, out of town and climbed a winding road to their place nearly at the top of a mountain.

We spoke for a while and then went out for the night with them.  We stopped at a couple of Taprooms before going to a nice Mexican restaurant for dinner.  After that, we went back to their home and stayed up talking and playing board games. 

The next morning, we got up and France cooked a great breakfast.  Laurie, Francine and I went down the road to a couple of fielded areas on her mountain and helped Francine get her first finds.  We had a great time trekking around the fields and climbing hillsides and stumbling over bushes.  The altitude is higher than Denver and we found we were frequently stopping to catch our breath.  There was a lot of wild flowers growing around and an area where there had been a small fire, taking out a copse of trees.  On one mountainside, while we were searching for the next location, a deer watched us but didn't seem too worried. 

After we tiered ourselves out, we returned home and got ready to go to downtown Golden.  I had a great time there and took a bunch of pictures, so I'll continue this account in my next travel post.    Stay tuned.

From the patio of a taproom we visited on our first night in Golden.

Sunrise the next morning from France's porch.

Down the road.  There was a geocache here. It was Francine's first.

Beautiful open spaces.  Cool air, but it did get hot.  The Oxygen was thin.

A copse of trees burned down.  New life, nature reborn, grows from the ashes.

Cactus. Really? Cactus?

Buzzzzz

Spectator to our geocaching

Took forever to find this.  wandered around and followed the GPS app.  Couldn't find it.  Then, I looked up one more time.  Yes, I climbed the twenty feet.  TFTC.

Francine. Great hostess along with her husband, France.