Last Post From Silverton

Yesterday (Friday) was an interesting day. A bunch of us drove up to the “Lake With No Name”.

While we were there we noticed a herd of sheep just coming over the top of one of the mountains. They can't be seen in this photo, but the sheep were on the horizon at the very top of the green mountain. I'm posting the pic so you can see the size of the mountain. Upon closer observation we saw the shepherd and one of his dogs coming quickly down the mountain toward his nearby tent. Every summer a sheep farm (or is it a ranch?) brings thousands of sheep to the area for summer grazing and we had noticed the shepherd’s tent beside the road when we arrived, but could tell the sheep hadn’t been in the valley yet because of all the wildflowers still around. Here’s where he lives:

When he got close enough to see us, we held up a can of Coke and he met us on the road. With Roger’s limited amount of “oil field Spanish”, we found out that his name is Hector, he’s from Peru and on a 2 year-8 month contract and has about 900 sheep in his herd. He’s halfway through his contract, then he’ll return to Peru for 3 months before coming back to the U.S. He seemed delighted to have someone to talk to and told us (mostly through motions and an occasional word of English) about having a bear wake him up one night in his tent. Roger asked if he had a gun and he replied that he had no gun but threw his boot at the bear to scare him away. Here we are with Hector and another photo of his “house”.

After we left him with his Coke, a sweet roll, some hard candy and some extra AA batteries for his radio, we proceeded on another trail and returned to camp for a late lunch.

I’ve either taken a cold or have allergies acting up, so I spent the afternoon (as I will again today) resting and trying to feel better. Will have to get enough energy to start putting things away so we can move tomorrow! We’ll spend tomorrow night in Chama, NM, and then on to Eagle Nest where we plan to stay at least a month. After as we get settled in the new place I’ll be back to update this journal, but don’t expect another post for a few days.