Los Alamos, NM to Alamosa, CO

Nice drive through the San Luis valley, with great views of snowy mountains including Blanca Peak, the fourth highest mountain in Colorado at 14,345 ft.). Stopped at Fort Garland Museum. Built in 1858, it played a role in protecting the early pioneers, and driving the Utes (native Americans) off their lands and onto a reservation. Kit Carson was there for a couple years. It wasn't a physical fort with a stockade or enclosure of any sort but rather a group of long buildings that served as baracks and officers' quarters around a square. The soldiers at Fort Garland also played a key role in defeating the Confederacy in the Civil War. In any case, it would have been a miserable way to live--and judging by the large number of desertions (punishable by death if they caught you), it's not just my modern sensibilities.

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