Sarria to Portomarin

Hello, everyone.  Yesterday's post didn't quite catch us up. Today's post will cover the next day. 

We left our barndominium in Sarria at our usual time, about 0700. The weather is no l9nger so cold that I need gloves in the morning, in fact it seems that spring is finally springing up for real.

In Galicia, the official route has kilometer distances to Santiago marked on the mojones. (A mojon is,an official marker, like the one in Bentsen park that is half of the border market, with the othar half being in Mexico and the actual border point being the center of the two.) If there are two routes, one will be "official " with distances and the other will be "complementario" and no distances are displayed. (In 2018, walking the Norte route, we elected to take the old route, paved, instead of the new, cool route, through a higher altitude meadow, and we spent the entire day with Complementario markers as we walked past houses. There weren't any bars or restaurants,  and we were pretty sure the new path had none either, but our path did have an impressive log to rest on at one point.) There was only one route out of Sarria, so picking the way was basically keeping an eye out for arrows, shells, and morons.

I thought the color contrast between the blooming broom shrubs and the green trees was pretty cool.

Galician cattle resting and probably chewing their cud.

There is one thing that wasn't photographed but maybe should have been. Just before Portomarin,  there was a split sign. One sign said "historic route" and pointed left. The other sign said something like "new route" and pointed right. I foolishly went with "historic" instead of asking the conveniently loitering road conservation guys about the choices. Should y'all find yourself in a similar situation,  ask the nice man hanging out there next to his work truck. The way we followed wend to a narrow, water-carved slot with slippery stones and very little room for a pole tip. Some people turned around to crawl backwards down the steep rock "stairs" which I was not able to do. I did make it down, using my hiking pole that was already out and grabbing the rocks at the side with the other hand. But it was really scary and so I think if there is a choice that isn't described in guide books, y'all should ask questions before deciding. 😉 A word to the wise and all that.

Another day on the road trip

Hello, everyone.  The last road trip post carried us through Palo Duro Canyon State Park. (By the way this was another of the places where my annual Texas State Parks pass paid off. I'm so glad I started having that a few years ago!) The end of that day fell in Trinidad. We stayed at the La Quinta there, at the beginning of town. This was one of the fancier members of that chain. Our room was very nice and we slept well after our eventful day.

The next day we took a leisurely stage to Denver, with some back roads in the Rockies.

This was one of the very informative sign boards at the rest stop near the stomping ground of the famous Indian warrior chief Cuerno Verde. The nearby valley is named after him. I think that his name, which means Green Horn, must have had another meaning than the Western expression "greenhorn" does. (That expression refers to a beginner, like the saying "wet behind the ears" does.) 

We drove over to Cripple Creek, because years ago it had been a touristic place with many artists and some historic sights. These days it's just a pile of casinos, we might as well have been in Nevada. Then we drove along more back roads and came into Denver from the western side. 

This was a view of interesting rock shapes along the way.