Day 20 – Great Sand Dunes National Park

Miles traveled: 280
Hours on Road: 5
States covered: 1 –Colorado

Yesterday I was convinced that Wilson trying to kill us. Now I see that it is us trying to kill ourselves. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll start at the beginning.

Today began in rain. Not a heavy downpour with lightning or thunder; just a little drizzle that came and went enough to get our tent drenched. It wasn’t even enough to bother us while we drank our coffee. Standing under the cover of a tree was enough to shade us from the drops. But our tent was not under any trees, so when it came time to pack up, the tent was covered with drops of water. We had managed to fill the tent with dirt during our stay, so when we took the fly off when the front door was open, the water flowed into the tent and turned the dirt into mud.

Parker, Jeff and I washed our hair with water that Jeff had heated over the Coleman stove. We felt like new people. It’s amazing how good clean hair makes one feel. We were packed up and ready to go by 10 a.m.

The first town we went through was Nederland. It’s a cute little town with beautiful wood homes lining the hills leading to and going from it. Because of these wooden homes, and probably because of the woodlands in general, the firehouse in Nederland was huge. They take putting out fires seriously. It was the largest building in town and was, appropriately, made of brick.

The roads in Colorado are fantastic. They all look freshly paved (stimulus dollars at work, and a very good use for the money, I must say). In fact, they sometimes have warnings that roads are damaged, and then we come across a stretch of road that looks like any road you’d find in Connecticut. I guess they have much higher standards here (along with much steeper roads).

Because of these steep, windy roads, my poor little baby got sick riding in the way back of the van. We got a bag to him in time, so the vomit was well-contained. After he threw up, he fell asleep, so he was no further disturbance to us.

We went through a town named Black Hawk, which had colorful houses as opposed to the common wood-brown houses we’d been seeing. The houses were built up on plateaus that were contained with beautiful stone walls. As we drove through the center of town we discovered the source of the town’s wealth – casinos. In fact, the town of Central City, just past Black Hawk, touts itself as “The Richest Square Mile on Earth.”

While Trey and Parker slept, we drove through a tunnel carved into the mountainside that was more than a mile long. Directly after the tunnel, the road got incredibly steep with a 9% grade at times. There were three runaway truck ramps and, while most traffic could travel at 60 mph, trucks over 26,000 GWVR had to go 30 mph. At least there were two lanes the whole way to accommodate the speed difference, and to allow cars to get out of the way of runaway trucks. The thing we’ve discovered along these steep roads with runaway truck ramps is that any truck that is “runaway” is never going to make it to one of the ramps. The roads are incredibly windy, so a semi going over 45 mph is never going to make the turns that are necessary to get to the ramps. Though it did look like they’d all been used in the recent past.

When we were about 35 miles from Vale the built-up, condo-filled towns began to appear. The first one we went through was Silverthorne, then Frisco, which sat right between a mountain face and a lake. Then we passed Copper Mountain Ski area, which didn’t look like much of a ski area – more like something you’d see in Connecticut than Colorado.

One big thing I noticed about this area was all the dead pines. The mountainside is generally green with all the live trees, with some areas of red where the pines have died. In this area, the mountainside was more red than green. I don’t know whether the death of the trees is some sort of blight or just the natural cycle of conifers around here.

At 10,618 feet we passed Ghost Valley that had once contained the highest Masonic Lodge in the U.S. The area is all rusty colored now from the mining that’s going on. We passed a hideous mess of a mountain that is half gone due to mining.

Leadville, at 10,152 feet, is a cute little town that looks similar to the center of New Milford – specifically, Bank Street. McDonald’s had not yet infiltrated the lovely village, which also had a rundown section at its southern border that contained mining areas and a giant junkyard.

Starting at the town of Buena Vista we began to see the Collegiate Peaks, which, I’m sure, are why Buena Vista was so named. They’re all above 14,000 feet. I have photos of them, so when you look through the photos for this blog, they’ll all come one after the other. First came Mt. Harvard (oddly, it’s photo #2), at 14,420 feet; then Mt. Yale (photo #1), at 14,196 feet; then Mt. Princeton (photos #3 & 4), at 14,197 feet; then Mt. Antero (I guess it’s technically not one of the collegiates, but it’s tall, and it’s photo #5), at 14,265 feet. Photos 6 & 7 are of what looked like the highest peak of all, but we never found out its name.

We stopped at McDonald’s in the town of Salida. When we first entered the town, it was mainly all houses that were located right along the road. That’s what’s so different out here from New England. We have villages that have a few large homes right in their centers, but most homes are away from the town center in neighborhoods. It seems like everyone out here who doesn’t live in the boondocks lives right off the main street in town. After passing through the home part of town we reached the commercial section, and that’s where we found McDonald’s (or, I should say, Lee found for us, because this stop was a little out of our way, but we wanted a McDonald’s, and Lee found it for us).

After this town, the roadway was lined with miles of small, green shrubs. It looked as though they were trying to use the shrubbery as a snowdrift blocker rather than having to put up those wood fences we saw earlier and assumed are for that purpose.

As we went on, the land on either side of us was as flat as could be for miles and miles until it reached the huge mountains that surrounded the area. We know the flatness went for miles because we could clearly see a storm occurring in front of us, but we drove for 25 miles and never reached the storm. Also, we could see the Great Sand Dunes when we still had to drive 25 miles straight then make a left-hand turn and go another 16 miles before we reached them. And when I say straight, I mean, point the van in the direction and let go of the steering wheel straight. As we watched the storms off in the distance, all I could think was that some family was having a picnic under the storm and saw that their neighbor down the road had no rain and Stella turned to Vern, punched him, and said, “I told you we should have built two miles east of here.”

I have a photo of a tiny building with a telephone pole next to it and the dunes in the distance. We still had 15 miles to go after that photo.

When we arrived at the park, there were no campsites left. I had called to see if we could make reservations, and they had told me it was first come first served. The girl at the gate said that some sites are reservable. I was livid when she told me that, and I complained to her that I was told differently when I called. She apologized for the mix-up and recommended that we stay at the Oasis, since it’s so close to the park and it has some shade trees, as opposed to the state park we’d passed 15 miles earlier. I hadn’t liked that state park anyway. The entrance to it was surrounded by high wire fences and looked more like a prison than a park.

We went to the Oasis Campground. You pay to get a site, then you drive in to choose your site. We figured out why they do it that way – get the money before you see the campground. The Oasis is aptly named if by Oasis you mean “pit of despair in a windblown hell hole.” The maintenance of the roads was non-existent. Their speed limit was 10, but we couldn’t go even that fast. Between the huge rocks and deep gulleys, going over 5 mph was out of the question.

We found a site not too far from the bathroom, which was an old railroad car and surprisingly clean inside. The site for our tent was so rock filled, we didn’t even bother to try to clear the area where we would sleep. As we put the tent up, the wind was blowing so hard we almost lost it a couple of times. I don’t think I need to explain the bad attitude I had during this process. In addition, the tent was still soaked from the morning, so we didn’t want to blow up the mattresses yet, but neither could we leave it without some weight in it, even though we had it staked down. We put a mattress in each corner so we could head out to the dunes and possibly change our attitudes. As it turned out, the wind was blowing so hard, the tent was nearly dry by the time we set it up, anyway. To prevent holes from rocks in the bottom of the tent, we slid the tarp underneath. It worked out fairly well.

We ate a little fried chicken since we hadn’t eaten much that day. We figured we could finish dinner once we’d gotten back from the dunes.

We were going to hit the Visitor Center first. As was fitting for our luck this day, the Center closed at 6 p.m. and it was 6:30. We went straight to the dunes. Oh My God!! The magnificence of the scene is indescribable. How something as grand at these dunes could develop in such a barren, mountain-enclosed area is miraculous. As it turns out, the creation of the dunes is the perfect combination of certain factors. “Wind and water are the primary movers of the grains (which mainly originated in the San Juan Mountains, over 65 miles to the west). Streams, creeks, melting snows, and flash floods brought bits of rock out of the mountains to the valley floor. Southwesterly winds then began the slow process of bouncing the grains toward the low curve of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There they piled up at the base of the mountains or dropped into creeks to be washed back out toward the valley floor. Age estimates range from 12,00 years to over a million years.”

According to Trey, Paul Bunyan took his son to the area of Bryce Canyon to play with a pail and shovel. It is the young boy who carved out Bryce Canyon. Upon returning home, the boy had to empty the sand out of his shoes before going into his house, and it was that emptying that created the Great Sand Dunes.

We entered the parking lot at the Great Sand Dunes Wilderness Area where you can wander anywhere you want along the dunes. I had no idea we’d be able to climb them. Without water or mental preparation, we headed for High Dune, a three-mile round trip in which there is a 650 foot elevation gain. We were already at almost 8,000 feet above sea level! The average time for this journey is two hours; it was already 7 p.m. From the top, there is a view of the entire 30 square mile dunefield. Although High Dune looks like the highest from the parking lot, it is not the highest dune. Star Dune is, at 750 feet high, but it’s also another 1.5 miles past High Dune.

I had no idea how hard it would be to climb these dunes. My fear of heights was not an issue at all on the ascent. I was too exhausted to care about how high I was. This is where the “killing ourselves” comes in. Or, maybe, we’re just trying to kill me. About halfway up the trouble began. I could make it 10 steps or so, then I’d have to rest. We were at a high elevation, so I’m sure that had something to do with it. Plus, I’d had that attempt at Mt. Audubon not even two days before. But this was ridiculous.

The going was hard enough with just having to scramble through sand, but then we reached the top of one ridge, and the wind was ridiculous. It blew so hard, spraying sand at us, that we actually got some scrapes from the sand. The wind was stronger than what we’d experienced near the top of Mt. Audubon.

As I sat in the middle of one hill, three hikers on their way down went by. They gave great encouragement about how much the walk is worth it and how beautiful the view is. I really thought I wasn’t going to make it. I mentioned to them how we didn’t even have water with us. One of the women gave me a liter bottle of water. I almost kissed her, but I was too worn out.

With renewed vigor, I moved on. After about 10 steps, I tried the bent-over walk, with hands and feet working together. It was actually helpful since I was carrying everyone’s flippy floppies; I just used them as shoes on my hands. I kept resting, but I also kept going. I was not going to have a second failed summit attempt. By the time I was close to the top, I was crawling on my knees, but I was still going. Meanwhile, indefatigable Trey had made it to the top and was coming back down to help Jeff and me make it to the top. Then I was there!! I could barely breath, but I laid there (yes, laid there, face down) and rested for a minute. When I sat up, what a view!! Thirty square miles of nothing but sand dune. Even in my state of exhaustion I could appreciate the magnificence of what I was seeing.

Then came the time to go down. I wasn’t sure how well I’d do there. We were up pretty high. I thought maybe I’d be too scared to walk down very well. But let me tell you, there are few things in life that are more fun than running down a sand dune! The easy movement of the sand makes each step very secure. The boys bounded down each hill so fast that their steps were about 10 feet apart. I didn’t go quite that fast, but I ran, and it was fantastic.

There were places on some hills where the wind blew so hard the sand wasn’t soft and pliable. It had actually become pretty hard, more like solid ground than sand. In those places I was not as secure with my movement. At the bottom of one such spot, Parker told me, “Nothing personal, Mom, but Dad was walking normally there and you looked like you were pulling a GI Joe.” I knew what he meant. When I get insecure at heights, I bend my legs to lower my center of gravity and splay out my arms to distribute my weight. This was the stance I’d used on the ledges over Jenny Lake. Parker was being kind associating my movement with GI Joe. I think I looked more like John Belushi in Animal House.

When we were done, we were all more exhausted than we’d even been in our lives, but we finished in only an hour and half – 30 minutes faster than the average. The boys could have probably done it in an hour if they didn’t have to wait for me. We never finished dinner. We got back to the tent and fell asleep. The wind had died down, the night was silent, and our bodies were ready for a well-earned rest.

For corresponding photos, go to:
http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1892877027/a=2740108027_2740108027/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/