Saturday, July 02, 2016

Murals of Conejos County

We moved on from Buena Vista to Conejos County. We spent 2 nights in the Mogote forest service campground, testing how well our new Airstream handled boon docking.

 The trailer did just fine. We didn't do as well. We miss our electrical hookups, telephone service and internet. I guess we have some adjusting to do with our new mode of camping, rather than living on the road. We have been in the Mogote campground before and it is very nice. Unfortunately, we were in the lower loop near the Conejos River and there were loads of mosquitoes. Next time we park in the upper loop.

We moved 3 miles south to the Conejos River RV Park. There we had full hookups and wifi. But no phone. There is no cell service in the area and the wifi was weak and slow but probably the best they could offer, given the location.

One of our excursions during that stay was to Antonito, 12 miles south. There we spent time looking at the Murals of Conejos County.  Nine of the 20 murals in the county are located in Antonito and we saw most of them.  Some are inside buildings that were closed.

History of the Conejos River Region is 16 feet high and 100 feet long. It covers the side of a building along Main St. Like 85% of the murals in the county, it was painted by Fred Haberlein, also know as "Lightning Heart."


Nearby is a mural on four grain silos on Main St., Antonito, also painted by Haberlein. Below is a photo of the overall mural and some of the details. It is titled The History of the San Luis Valley.


The mural shows farmers, wagon trains, miners, soldiers and trains.







Elsewhere in town we saw Mimbres Trout


the Great Water Serpent of the Rio Grande


and the Mimbres Rabbit


There are more murals in the nearby towns of La Jara, Bountiful, Manassa and Conejos, but we had working steam engines to see, so we didn't go looking for more murals.

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