To celebrate our two year anniversary of moving to this beautiful part of Colorado, we drove up to Cordova Pass yesterday. As usual we had no traffic on the way up there and only met one other couple along the way.

Cordova Pass,  at 11,248 feet, lies on the western shoulder of the West Spanish Peak, east of the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  The drive up the pass can be a bit rough at times, but I enjoyed moving through the various eco-systems, and did not even know that we might be able to camp up there sometime. They have a bathroom!

We had heard that mid-June is a great time to see wildflowers up there, and they were right. These Blue Flag Wild Iris were everywhere…

…along with lots of Golden Banner and dandelions.

Along the way at the lower elevations we saw lots of these beautiful bushes in bloom. Thanks to my botanist friends I now know these are New Mexican Locust. No wonder I never saw them up north.

Lots of great views near the top of the pass…

…and the trees along the road were florescent GREEN!

Then there is this very cool arch cut into a dike on the other side of the pass. We had to stop so Mike could study the geology of the whole thing, of course.

Our drive down the North Fork of the Apishapa River Valley, down through Gulnare and Aguilar, was lush and so beautiful! This is one of the few places I have been in this country where everything seems exactly like it might have been a hundred years ago.

And I loved this cool looking Teletubbie village up on the hill!

Bye Bye!