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open flat bottom on a level with the whole San Louis Valley, which is an enormous arid plain over a lake bed. At Alamosa we crossed the nearly dry  bed of the Rio Grande and turned south on the Narrow Gauge to Antonito, then transferred to the mixed train for Tres Piedras. 
The San Louis Valley is all Upper Sonoran, very arid, and now very dry & barren save for irrigated areas mainly around the edges where streams come down from the mountains. 
The Rio Grande runs through the valley to the south but the valley floor slopes down to the north. The highest part of the valley on its southern rim is just south of the New Mex. line, where a series of old lava craters reach across & lava flows have built up a dam that has evidently held the water in a great lake but through which