Bear Basin NATRC photos

Again I find myself heading west across Texas, on the highway that I have taken many times before. I can see for miles, and the sky changes often.


We stop in Clayton NM at a horse hotel for the night, rather than the odd little fairgrounds I stayed at before. Hank had a nice large corral. It had just rained, and he really wanted to roll in the mud. I told him not until I got a blanket on him. He can be a horse and get dirty after the ride, but for now, he needed to stay clean.


We arrived in camp, settled in, and the next morning awoke to a bit of fog draped over camp below us, and some chilly tempatures. I had parked up the hill in camp. Hank was warm in his blanket he won at the first CO ride we did this year. behind.



The next morning, again we found fog and clouds drifting through the area to make the sunrise memorable.


But it quickly moved out, showing us the spectacular view we had from the camper, and what a beautiful day it was going to be on the trail


The views from the trail were beautiful. Often we did not have a trail, but just followed ribbons across country.




This is an area that had a lot of mining, and some of the very old mines are visable. One of them below, collapsed with 13 miners down inside in the 1800's, and they never recovered their bodies, instead, leaving the mine as their grave.



We had such a wonderful variety of trail, from open high country pasture land



Through Aspen groves where we got to see a Doe


Through the Pines, where we were blessed to be able to spot a cow Elk hiding down in the trees as we rode past



We had a few technical sections with narrow trail above a dry creek, and rocky sections to carefully pick our way through




But it was the views I will remember the most from this lovely area. Here we can see camp, and beyond are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.(click photo for larger view)