La Junta

That makes a little bit more sense.

Well, apparently the Colorado tarantulas are in the La Junta area.

I can't get over how many of you have gone out there looking for them.

Steve just shared some pictures.

One of our listeners said Lane Frost is from Lane, Oklahoma.

Is that true? Are you goofing on us? Is that true? And then another listener says, quote, "It says Lane Frost was born in La Junta, Colorado." I don't know.

I've been cheated.

Hm.

Yeah.

It was insane because we went from, you know, Fort Collins, which is a population center to the middle of nowhere, like Rocky Ford, La Junta.

And one day there wasn't a man my size walking along the side of the road.

And then the next day when we moved there, all of a sudden I was just a new like cryptid just walking.

Tarantulas, thousands of them, stalk across southeastern Colorado every fall looking for mates.

This weekend, the La Junta Tarantula Fest welcomes a special two-legged guest, one of Hollywood's best-known bug wranglers.

Entomologist Stephen Kutcher has gotten insects and spiders to hit their mark for half a century.

Wait.

The delightful Stephen Kutcher is with us.

For decades, he's been a bug wrangler in Hollywood.

He's a special guest at this weekend's La Junta Tarantula Fest.

After the break, how he helps actors overcome their fears of creepy crawlies.

You mentioned the flats at Colorado.

I got a friend there in the La Junta area in Colorado, and it's really dry there.

And it's been a number of years.

where they've been in a drought.

Yeah, I would say the 18-hour round trip is probably up there.

We also took a trip from Lawton, Oklahoma to La Junta, Colorado to watch a kid at Otero Junior College.

I honestly can't remember how long that was, but it was close to that as well as far as a round trip.

Funny story, Otero, I played junior college in Lamar, and when I played against Otero, they had a guy named Darvin Ham.

cute.

Well, on a lighter note, I'm not a spider person, but I did want to start putting it in people's minds that Tarantula Festival is coming up in La Junta at the end of September.

So for those of us that are not spider people, stay away from La Junta.

But there's going to be a whole tarantula migration.

Spiders are awesome.

Go to La Junta.

It's a great event in La

Junta.

But increasingly, people believed obstacles could be engineered away.

And maybe that's what makes Pecos such a good place to stop after our last visit to La Junta.

At La Junta, generations of indigenous communities had learned how to live within the limits of the desert.

They understood where water was.

They farmed the floodplain.