Photo By Roswita Case

On the Santa Fe Trail Elderhostel®     These photographs were taken during the Santa Fe Trail Elderhostel® on which Painted Lady is based. They are not extensive and they are a bit sterile in that most don't contain people, but a couple years have gone by and these are the best I could come up with. I'd be interested in the reaction of those who actually read Painted Lady to see if enhances the word pictures we've built together, I as the writer, and you as my collaborator reader, for it takes us both to make the story come alive. There is an email thing down below the photos and if you'd care to send me your opinion, I'd be glad to receive it.

Where Moondance Wolf met her demise in Chapter 1

Horse statues Dodee painted in Denver's Adam's Mark Hotel in Chapter 2

The Comfort Suits'slobby where Officer Sundown interviewed Jim and Dodee in Chapter 5

They stopped off at Air Force Academy's visitors center in Chapoter 10,

Our 'covered wagon' which chased after a kidnapper in Trinidad

Breakfast in the Holiday Inn Express in La Junta, CO, Chapter 16

"Bent's Fort stuck out of the tabletop plain in the middle of Nowheresville" Chapter 17

Fort's courtyard, fur press, and overhangs where "a thin man stood in the shade"

This would have been my favorite room in the fort

Me and Betty Blanco, also called Buffalo Woman, who showed us through the Fort

All that's left of Bent's New Fort, where Ace got sick, Chapter 19

Kit Carson in a park in Trinidad, CO

Trinidad with Fishers Peak--somewhere down there is the Dairy Queen

Stagecoach in Trinidad's museum, Chapter 24

On the way to Santa Fe

Just to the right of the man are ruts still left by the trail wagons 150 years before

One of over 200 trail markers placed by the Daughters of the American Revolution

The Santa Fe Trail where Conestoga wagons made 17 miles, on a good day

Plaza Resolana in Santa Fe where Ace Rudavsky met them with open arms, chapter 29

San Miguel Mission, oldest church in USA, on walking tour in Chapter 31

All that's left of Fort Union, somewhere along the old Santa Fe Trail, chapter 36

The St. James Hotel in downtown Cimarron, also known as the Ghost Hotel

The hallway where ghostly apparitions...

... and shotouts took place, chapter 38-39

The ghosts of Beauregard St. Simian and Wild Sam Sheridan gambled at the roulette table--ignore that glazed eyed man

"squinting his eyes and using only a little imagination" Jim made out the wallpaper as "grinning skulls"

    As with all the Elderhostels® I've been on, we had good coordinators, lots of fun, learned a lot, and, maybe more than the others, camaraderie, no doubt brought about by all the wine and cheese parties we had. Oh, and yeah, as with all the Elderhostels I've been on, a delicious murder or two. Hmmm, would you like to go on an Elderhostel with me?
Peter E. Abresch, June 20 , 2004

Drop me a line.

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