This morning we out of Pasoda Springs and drove east to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. This was a really lovely part of our drive, as we saw the beginnings of fall colors painted over the mountains.
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| Fall colors through the San Juan mountains. |
We started seeing the sand dunes in the distance when we were still more than 20 miles away from them, just a little brush of khaki at the base of the mountains.
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| Great Sand Dunes from 20 miles away! |
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| About 10 miles away. |
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| Still about 6 miles away! |
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| The entrance to the dunes - still a half mile walk to be at the base of the dunes! |
We read in the guidebook that it is a 2.5 mile hike just to reach the top of the first hill of dunes! I was tempted to try it, but hiking through sand is EXHAUSTING! We probably hiked MAYBE a half mile onto a small dune before we were too tired to keep going. :) So we decided to try out our sled, which we had dragged across four states from White Sands National Monument to use here at Great Sand Dunes - may as well get our money's worth out of it!
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| Hiking through the dunes with my trusty sled! :) |
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| Beautiful views, even from our tiny little dune! |
Unfortunately, the sand at Great Sand Dunes is significantly different than White Sands - it is softer and when I tried to slide down the dune, I just got stuck and didn't move, so I had to "scootch" down the hill, probably the clumsiest sled ride ever. :) FAIL number 1.
I tried to do a couple obligatory yoga photos, but hands and feet sink pretty deep in this sand...
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| Koudinyasana with sketchy form due to being halfway up my forearms in sand! :D |
And immediately after this photo, I fell face first in the sand. Sand stuck EVERYWHERE!! (FAIL number 2 :) )
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| Here's me trying to clean sand out of my bra. :) |
We dragged ourselves through the sand back to the car, then continued north through the mountains toward Royal Gorge. We were climbing higher in elevation, so we got to see even more beautiful fall colors.
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| Colorado in the early fall is lovely! |
After a couple hours of beautiful driving, we arrived at Royal Gorge, which at one time was the highest suspension bridge in the world! We arrived after 4pm, and we saw that each of us had to pay $16 to just walk or drive across the bridge! We paid less than that to enter national parks that cover 200 or more square MILES! But we had driven out of our way to go see it, so of course we paid the fee. We asked the gate attendant what $16 got us, and she said a viewpoint, a walk across the bridge, and "...you can walk behind the building, too!" What a privilege to walk BEHIND the visitor's center. :) All the few other "attractions" were closed at 4pm, with no discount in pricing. As we wandered around the construction-laden site, we noticed all the other closed attractions were actually ADDITIONAL pricing to the $16 dollars, and the food was crazy expensive - even the pop machine was $4 per can of pop!
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| Royal Ripoff bridge. |
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| The view down into the gorge. |
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| View from the viewpoint called Point Sublime. |
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| It's pretty high. :) |
After Gavin and I groused to each other all the way across the bridge and back about the price, we read the little paper they gave us when we paid, and it said almost the entire park was destroyed in a wildfire last year - 49 of the 50 buildings were ruined, hence all the construction happening on the site. So then we felt bad for complaining, even though it was just to each other. :)
After Royal Gorge, we drove north again toward our next destination: Pike's Peak. We decided to spend the night in the touristy and cute Manitou Springs right at the beginning of the Pike's Peak highway. We had dinner at the Manitou Brewery, which seemed to be the ONLY restaurant in town that was full of people; the rest of the town seemed pretty quiet. We then walked a few doors down to the Mona Lisa Cafe, a fondue restaurant, to end our night stuffed with chocolate fondue. Since Gavin and I can never agree on chocolate (he likes milk chocolate and I like dark), we each got our own fondue, served with all kinds of things to dip in it! Mine was "Flaming Turtle" and they lit it on fire at the table so I could roast a marshmallow to dip in the chocolate. :) We left the Mona Lisa full to bursting, and went back to our hotel with no energy to do anything but go to sleep. Tomorrow we better WALK up to Pike's Peak to burn off the fondue! :)
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