Trinidad CO to La Vita CO
We got up before the sun on another very chilly mountain morning, guess that’s what you get when you’re over 6000 feet. Bought a pound of Starbucks yesterday and had some good coffee this morning, tired of the bland stuff.
Our friends, Doug and Dina, were camping about 40 minutes away in the direction the trail was going so we met them at their place to do a bit of geocaching and exploring today. The main cache on our agenda was GC19 Colorado’s 2nd oldest cache. It was located above 11000 feet near Cordova Pass. Having a 4×4 wasn’t a total requirement but we both had Jeeps so it was a nice drive up the mountain.
Fantastic location for a geocache! They allowed wild camping up here so we considered camping but it was just a little too early in the day so we didn’t. We were in the middle of nowhere on top of a high mountain pass with 5 bars of 4G signal, a Pokestop, a Poke Gym, and a vault toilet… pretty hard to pass up!
Since we weren’t staying we drove a few more miles up the trail to find an arch built into the mountain and took some cool photos with the Jeeps. No cache there but we did a 5 or 6 point turn around and went back toward Cordova Pass to find another one. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be but after a precarious scramble down the steep hill I found the old container and Doug had a replacement log so we signed it and headed out to find lunch.
We had been told that the Dog Bar in Cuchara was a good spot and it didn’t dissappoint. Did a little browsing in the shops before saying our goodbyes and heading down the trail.
We made it to La Vita and weren’t seeing anything on the maps but stumbled on a campground that stuffed us into a little corner to park. Glad we did, it was a nice friendly place. Around six another camper who was traveling the country with his girlfriend put on show at the campfire. His specialty was Merle Haggerd and he played a lot of old time country along with originals that was all pretty good. A great way to end a nice day.
