My Dream Vacation
Matthew's Graduation and The Royal Gorge Bridge
After leaving the Royal Gorge (right outside of Canon City), we went west and then south toward the Great Sand Dunes and San Luis State Park.
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| First Campsite |
I made reservations to stay at San Luis State Park over the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Please don't ask me why. I don't remember! When we arrived at San Luis State Park, I was under the impression that the Great Sand Dunes did not have a campground. San Luis State Park was beautiful and it had electrical hookups. To be honest, I was a little scared of this campground. When I looked at the pictures online, it just looked like a desert to me and not very attractive. When we showed up and got settled, I was very impressed of our views of the Great Sand Dunes and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I was disappointed that we would only stay one night. The place was just gorgeous. The weather was perfect. It was around 60-65 degrees during the day and low 40's at night.
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| Relaxing, finally |
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| The Moon Lit Up the Sky! |
Looking at this picture above, you see the Great Sand Dunes. Really, they look kind of puny up against the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. From Wikipedia, "The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America, rising about 750 feet (230 m) from the floor of the San Luis Valley on the western base of the Sangre de Cristo Range, covering about 19,000 acres (77 km2). Researchers say that the dunes started forming less than 440,000 years ago.
The dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, flowing through the San Luis Valley. Over the ages, westerly winds picked up sand particles from the river flood plain. As the wind lost power before crossing the Sangre de Cristo Range, the sand was deposited on the east edge of the valley. This process continues, and the dunes are slowly growing. The wind changes the shape of the dunes daily."
Grant and Daniel made their way up to the second tallest sand dune in the North America. It was very difficult to walk up these massive dunes. So Miles and I only went up a couple before we slid down to the bottom to play in the creek.
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| There they are! |
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| I am watching Miles slide down to the bottom |
We eventually all made our way back to the RV with sand everywhere (in our ears, pockets, shoes, etc). Remember that brand new RV we just got? As soon as we came in with all that sand, I knew keeping it clean was going to be difficult!
On the Road again... This time we traveled west to Label C (as shown on the aforementioned map) past Durango Colorado. We took the Wolf Creek Pass which took us over the Great Continental Divide. We left San Luis Valley which was a desert and came through San Juan Mountains which took us up to 10,857 feet above sea level and into a beautiful alpine forest.
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| Starting to get chilly! |
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| If I spit on my side and the boys spit on their side, our spits would end up in two different oceans! |
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| Flips flops in the snow - got to love it! |
From Wikipedia,
"Wolf Creek Pass was made famous in 1975 by Country music artist C. W. McCall's humorous spoken word song of the same name, in which the pass is fondly described as "37 miles o' hell -- which is up on the Great Divide." In the song, two truckers drive an out-of-control 1948 Peterbilt down U.S. Highway 160 to Pagosa Springs -- a 5,000-foot (1,500 m) drop in elevation.
I looked at Earl and his eyes was wide
His lip was curled, and his leg was fried.
And his hand was froze to the wheel like a tongue to a sled in the middle of a blizzard.
I says,"Earl, I'm not the type to complain
But the time has come for me to explain
That if you don't apply some brake real soon,
they're gonna have to pick us up with a stick and a spoon..."("Wolf Creek Pass" written by Bill Fries and Chip Davis, sung by C.W. McCall)"
1 comment:
I love the photo of Daniel and grant on the sand dune. A memory for a lifetime.
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