The southeast corner of Colorado is not a usual stop on the tourist map for travelers hurrying on into this state's more famous views. This lesser-known area may be less spectacular than some other parts of this mountainous state. But we still think it is lovely. Our main reason for our stop in La Veta, Colorado, is to spend some time on the Highway of Legends Scenic Byway. In our opinion, the best part of the byway leaves from our town and heads south down highway 12 towards the West Peak of the Spanish Peaks. 
Because Denisa likes loop hikes, we're making this into a loop drive by returning to our campground via I-25. Starting the loop in La Veta took us by the unusual rock fins that radiate from West Peak. The Highway of Legends took us right beside many of these dikes that we described in the last blog. 
Eleven miles south of La Veta, is the mountain town of Cuchara, and it's packed with tourists on the weekend. With only several eating establishments, and a couple more shops, there were no parking places on its dirt Main Street so we barely paused here.
The first stop on our loop was actually off the Legends Highway. We drove up forest service road 422 in search of a nice mountain lake. We found that Blue Lake was too small for kayaking, and the fishermen were lined up on its shore this weekend.
The ranger told us that they have stocked less fish in these mountain lakes because of the pandemic. But this fisherman was proud to show off the little rainbow trout he had just caught.
We headed further up that gravel forest service road to the next stop at Bear Lake. A larger lake, it would have been better for a kayak trip on a less-busy week day.
But with rain in our forecast, we opted for a hike at Bear Lake instead of a paddle. Sure enough, the clouds gathered this morning, and we got a little wet as we started walking toward one of the summits around Bear Lake.
This is supposed to be the monsoon season, characterized by daily afternoon showers in the mountains. But this summer we have seen only sprinkles instead of good rains. Instead of a monsoon, this year they are calling it a "non-soon." Instead of fresh green new growth on the tips of the evergreens, on this hike we saw brown dead tips from this lack of rain.
Since we spend so much time hiking among trees, we are always looking to learn more about them. For example, this is a bristlecone pine, said to be the longest-living trees on earth. We were concerned that this tree might be short-lived with all the tiny dots of white resin on its needles. But a quick google search tells us that is normal for this time of year. So this tree might live as long as "Methuselah" the 4,852-year-old bristlecone that is thought to be the oldest known living thing on the earth.
We're late enough in the season that most of the wildflowers are finished for the year. In fact, these wild roses were probably blooming months ago. But the trail gets a nice pop of color at the end of the season when the rose hips turn a bright red on the vine.
The rain clouds parted to give us some blue skies. As we got to our little summit, we got a great view of the bigger West Peak of the Spanish Peaks in front of us.
That's the direction we're heading on this road-trip day around the Highway of Legends. After our 3-mile hike at Bear Lake, we got back on the highway towards Cuchara Pass, where we got more views of the taller mountains north of here. Mark has downloaded an audio tour on his I-phone that can track our progress on this scenic loop. As we near an interesting view, it describes what we are seeing, and its legendary significance to the Highway of Legends.
More importantly, it takes us to the trailhead of the West Peak summit trail. The first part of the trail is relatively flat, and this is a popular trail to get some good views of West Peak. We love starting a trail at over 11,000 feet as it gives us good views fast.
But the crowds (and the air) thins as we start some serious elevation gain and even better views of the mountain. We are wandering another of God's wonders today!
From this higher elevation we can look down for the aerial view of the rocky dikes that are radiating down from the sides of this big mountain. These tall rock fins stick out above the tree-covered mountain-side all around us.
In fact, we sat on top of one of those rock dikes for an unobstructed view of West Peak as we hiked higher.
We were working hard, making good elevation gain in this section of the hike. Without wildflowers on the trail, we had to find another excuse to take pictures so we could stop to catch our breath. So we took pictures of this interesting dead tree instead.
We love the color and character of these old barren trees. This one even had a built-in seat for tired wanderers.
Many switchbacks later, we finally popped out above treeline, and found the big rock cairn that indicates we have made it to our destination today.
Looking in the other direction from that big rock cairn, we can see the summit of West Peak right behind Mark.
From here the trail gets even more difficult, with the loose rock path and more elevation gain. Mark hiked up through the scree field a little further, but we had already decided that we wouldn't go to the summit today.
After hiking back to the car, we headed further down the bumpy Cordova Pass gravel road for another 3.8 miles to the Apishapa Arch. That doesn't sound very far, but it took close to 30 minutes to get there. Built in 1933 as part of a CCC project, the road crew tunneled through one of the rock dikes and made a masonry arch to continue this road all the way to the town of Aguilar.
After such a long and bumpy road to get here, we took pictures from both sides of the arch. We turned around here because we don't want to find out how long it would take to make the 25-mile bumpy ride all the way to Aguilar.
The highway now heads down to lower elevations, as it bends around the turquoise waters of North Lake.
We took a little hike around the lake, scaring up a deer on this trail that doesn't get many hikers. We're not sure who was the most startled--the doe or Denisa. We might have kayaked this pretty little lake, but we usually don't care for a lake that is surrounded by a highway. We could see the entire lake from the car without going to the trouble of inflating the kayak.
Our audio tour alerted us as we passed by Monument Lake, but we didn't enter this fee area. Then we heard the audio description of the tiny village of Stonewall--named after another of those tall stone fins that radiates from the Spanish Peaks.
As we continued on our loop drive to lower elevations, our audio tour told us legends of old mining settlements and early settlers that worked hard to make a living from this rocky soil. Under the rocky soil lies veins of coal, and legendary mining towns that were abandoned years ago can be found along the Scenic Highway of Legends. We also passed by the coke ovens near the aptly named town of Cokedale, Colorado.
From the highway, it looks like we have stumbled onto the arches of Roman aqueducts.
But our audio tour tells us that these long rows were once the individual ovens that were heated to remove the impurities from the local coal to cook it into the higher quality coke used for making iron. These 350 coke ovens were built in 1907. The refining company also built little square homes for their workers and their families to live, and the town of Cokedale was born. When the ovens were shut down in 1947, residents could buy their houses for $100 per room. The small town of Cokedale still survives along the Legends Highway. But only the shells of the old ovens are left.
Another reminder of the years of coke-production are the hills of black slag that line the Legends Highway. These ebony colored hills are the waste product of the mining and cooking process that went on in these foothills for forty years.
The Legends Highway continues to Trinidad, where we joined I-25 to continue our loop drive to Walsenberg, Colorado. The interstate drive is the less-scenic part of the loop, but we were still entertained by an occasional audio tour description as we finished the 120-mile drive. Of course, we traveled much further with our gravel-road detours. On our last night in La Veta, we were treated to another nice sunset along the Scenic Highway of Legends--our last in a great summer of Colorado sunsets that we have been blessed to wander this year.
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