Traveling the USA Part II

Continuing our attempt to visit all of the country's national parks we start the day by driving to Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was made a national park in 2004, so it's one of the newest parks (maybe the newest?). It's claim to fame is the tallest sand dunes in North America. We're a little confused since there was a state park in Idaho that claimed to have the tallest sand dune in North America. These sand dunes are definately a lot taller than the sand dunes in Idaho. I don't think pictures can relay how large these sand dunes are; it's odd because there is no desert here, so the dunes are unexpected.

We keep our usual national park routine of looking at the displays at the visitor center and watching their movie. We then start our hike up to the top of the dunes. The visitor center movie warned us that this is a very demanding hike. It doesn't look that hard and the start is very easy: a walk through the Medano Creek, that runs along the edge of the dunes in the spring (it dries up in July).

It is a challenging hike! We pass several people coming down and ask them if they made it to the top and most of them are saying "no" -- too tough, too hot, too high altitude, ran out of water, etc. We are determined to make it to the top of the dune. We take lots of breaks going up the dunes. The hike isn't steep, but every step is in loose sand and the air is thin at this altitude (around 8000 ft).

Here is a picture of Joe climbing the dune (we chose different routes at one section; there is no marked trail, each person chooses their path to the top):

At one point I don't think I can make it any further, but we rest for 10 minutes and I am determined to make it to the top (as long as my heart doesn't explode from over exertion). Here is a view of the visitor center from about halfway to the top of the dunes

We finally make it to the top. We thought that we were climbing to the top of the tallest dune, but turns out this is only the second tallest dune. The tallest dune is another mile and a half. NO WAY can I make it to that dune, but we do see two people in the distance who are trying to get to the tallest dune. We're proud to simply make it to the top of this dune; there are only about ten of us on the top of the dune and there were many more who gave up and turned back before making it to the top.

The view is nice from the top; but the view was just as nice halfway up the dune :-)

The trip down the dune is a lot of fun! We run down the steep parts, screaming...lots of fun!

When we get to the bottom of the dunes (much quicker than the hike up), we spend time wading through the shallow Medano Creek. The water feels good on our feet and the ripples that the stream makes are interesting to watch.

We drive down the road to have a picnic lunch and a short hike to Zapata Falls.

It's only about 20 minutes to the creek which flows out of the falls, but to get to see the actual waterfall we need to hike in and along the creek and then into a cave-type opening to see the falls. I step into the water to walk through the creek and my feet are NUMB within the first 30 seconds. The water is from snow-melt and is incredibly cold.

No photo of the actual waterfalls since the water was spraying out of the waterfall, but an interesting hike to an almost hidden waterfall.

We drive back to the campground for a refreshing swim in the pool, followed by dinner and doing some laundry.

We pack up and get an early start today. We have a long drive through the mountains.

But as we drive through Montrose we see the Russell Stover Candy outlet store (they appear to have a factory behind the store), so we end up spending 45 minutes at the store and buy way too much candy.

I'm not sure if it's the beautiful sunny day or the fact that I ate lots of free chocolate candy samples at the Russell Stover Store, but the scenery today is wonderful! We drive route 550, also known as "The Million Dollar Highway". It is an incredible road that goes through the San Juan Mountain Range between Ouray, Silverton and Durango, Colorado.

I really like the town of Ouray and tell Jere and Joe that we should move there :-) It's a relatively small town with some wonderfully restored old buildings and is totally surrounded by tall mountains.

The road over the mountain coming out of Ouray is scary, and I try not to look over the side of the road: no guardrails and some very steep drop-offs. However, the scenery is incredible.

Not sure how well this photo shows the drop off beside the road, but here is my attempt to show the lack of guardrails and the steep drop off. I take the photo by sticking my arm out the window and snapping :-) It's a long way down:

We pass several deserted mines during our drive today:

We stop along the road above Silverton and have some lunch.

Then continue our scenic drive to Durango before turning east through the Rio Grande Mountains along the Rio Grand River. More incredible scenery.

We stop at one roadsite rest where there is a waterfall and there are lots of little chipmunks. This one chipmunk walked over towards me and started eating the flower near my foot.

We leave the mountains and continue to the Alamosa KOA. Long day of driving, so we have a late dinner and relax around the campground for the remainder of the night.

We are trying to visit all (most?) of the country's national parks, so today we will visit one of the newer parks (created in 1999): Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. We're not sure who came up with this name, but we think they should have just called it Black Canyon National Park. Anyway, we head out to the park and of course our first stop is again the Visitor Center, where we look at the exhibits and watch the movie. This movie is actually very good (some of the national park's have movies that were produced in the 1970s and really need to be updated). Part of the movie is about Reverand Warner, who was the person responsible for getting the Black Canyon designated as a national monument in the 1930s. This Episcopal minister loved the canyon and would often use the canyon as a theme for his sermons. He preached that "God gives abundantly, but not limitless" -- we need to take care of the beautiful places on earth that he has given us. The man was "green" before it became fashionable.

The park is essentially a scenic drive around the top of the canyon. The walls of the canyon are too steep for anyone but experienced mountain climbers.

The logo of the park includes two "dragons" in the sky. The logo is based on these two "dragons" on the side of the canyon:

So we stop at most of the 12 look-outs on the South Rim. The look-outs are of the canyon; it's a hot day and getting in and out of the hot car make for a not-so-pleasant drive. We take one short hike at the end of the drive, Warner Peak Trail. It's a scenic hike and it feels good to be out of the car.

After the scenic drive we take the East Portal Drive down to the river, part of the Curecanti National Recreation Area. The road is narrow, with no guardrails and some of the drive is somewhat scary. When we get to the bottom, Joe and Jere walk on a trail by the river while I sit and enjoy the scenery.

We head back to the RV Park to play a round of miniature golf

and then head to Wendys again for a late dinner (the campground gave us coupons for Buy 1 Get 1 Free Combo Meal coupons for Wendys; good deal and Joe likes Wendys).

We pack up and start our 5 hour scenic drive from Colorado Springs to Montrose, Colorado (the closest town to Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park, which we plan to visit tomorrow). Most of the drive is on Route 50, with many miles following the shores of the Arkansas River. We stop and watch rafters go down the river. We had debated about rafting this river, but decided against it. After seeing how high and rough the water is, I'm glad we decided against it. We watch one raft dump several people into the water as the raft goes through some rough white water.

We also stop at Dillons Pinnacles in Curecanti National Recreation area to read some signs and enjoy the scenery.

We get to the Cedar Creek RV park in Montrose by mid-afternoon. Jere goes to the other end of town to get all the mud from yesterday's Pike's Peak drive washed off, while Joe and I hang out at the campground. We then run some errands and go out to Wendy's for a late dinner. We actually have cable TV at the park so we spend some time watching the Discovery Channel and then call it a day.

The weather is still cloudy and rainy in the morning, but we decide to drive up to the top of Pikes Peak anyway. We get to the entrance and see the sign that says it is 36 degrees at the peak. We ask the cashier if the sign if accurate and he says "a storm just went through so it is probably a few degrees colder". I'm glad I wore pants.

We drive up in the dreary weather and they are working on the road near the top where the visibility is a few feet at places. The road is muddy and the drive gets kindof scary at places.

We get to the top and look around.

There's a plaque at the top of Pikes Peak commemorating the 100th anniversary of the writing of the song, "America, the Beautiful".

Apparently the composer wrote the song after traveling to the top of Pikes Peak and being inspired by the beautiful view. She must have traveled to the top on a clear day; here is the view we saw:

We go into the gift shop and have some of their freshly made donuts (according to the sign, this is the only place that the donuts can be made due to the high altitude). The donuts are actually very good. And they're warm, which is good since it's cold up here. So after eating our donuts and drinking some hot chocolate, we head back down the mountain.

We stop at a lookout on the way down and Joe wants to hike over to a large rock outcropping, so Jere and he hike over to the rock while I check out the wildflowers near the lookout. They are tiny specks on top of the rock:

The tundra wildflowers are everywhere on this part of the mountain, so the three of us head down the trail to look at the wildflowers. We see lots and lots of wildflowers everywhere along the path,

AND the fog breaks up several times for us to see a view of the valley below us.

We continue down the mountain and stop at Halfway Picnic Grove to eat our lunch. As we're eating, the sky is getting blue. Jere thinks we should head back up the mountain now that the fog/clouds are lifting. Joe votes NO, but I know Jere well enough that he's going to drive back up no matter what Joe and I say, so I say "sure, let's go. I have nothing else planned for the rest of the day".

We get back to the top and it is initially still very cloudy, but then the clouds break apart and we get a wonderful view. Yea!

We drive back down the mountain again (it's a lot different drive in clear skies versus the fog; we never realized how big a drop off was beside the road at places when there was so much fog that we could barely see where to drive). Our only stop on the way back to the campground is to get some diesel (we're paying around $4.75/gallon these days). We have some leftovers for dinner. The wifi is down again so I organize some photos, read a book, and watch the one channel we get on TV.