Today we drove from the KOA campground north of Ouray to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I did a bit of a double-take there: dunes in Colorado? Yes, this is the newest National Park (2004) and the dunes are the highest in North America. Okay, that should be worth seeing.
We
had to retrace some of our route but that was
fine since it is all beautiful. [The
pictures to the left and right were taken along
Highway 50 between Cimarron and Gunnison.]
We stopped at a rest area in Cimarron
where John remembered
a particular cliff from 8 years ago that was full of the sorts of rocks
he collects. And he did find some awesome specimens there.
Since this is going to be a short segment, this is a good
place to share just a few that he added to his collection on this trip,
including one he found at Cimarron that he referred to as the "grand
prize" (center below). 
We made a final grocery stop in Gunnison and then had lunch at the very nice city park at the east end of town. I discovered in going back through the pictures that we took NO pictures between Gunnison and the Dunes, even though we drove through some beautiful scenery! This is at least partly because I was driving and I'm the usual picture taker. We went over several mountain passes and the drive was lovely - most of the route is labeled as "scenic drive" in the atlas. Maybe we had just become too accustomed to gorgeous scenery by then?
Once
we hit State Highway 17 that runs through Moffat, Hooper and down to
Mosca, we were in the desert. It was very hot and pretty much
"nothing" to see. We got to the Dunes around 3 PM.
It is a pretty impressive approach: there's just lots of flat
desert and then all of a sudden, it seems, you see the Sangre de
Cristo mountains and this vague, light-colored mound in front of them
that
morphs into a dune as you get closer! We started at the Visitor Center, walking through their short nature walk around the building to reacquaint ourselves with some of the common desert plants - Indian ricegrass, fringed sage, cacti, horsebrush (center below). At left below is a view, from behind the visitor center, of the desert leading up to the dune. At right is what I called the beach: the flat sandy part that stretched about half a mile before the dune started to rise. Medano Creek runs along the edge of the sand. While it is just a trickle at this time of year, the sand was moist enough in that area that we saw families building elaborate sand castles.
Then,
we went to play on the dunes. 
For
some perspective and to give you an idea of the size of these things,
the picture at the left shows some of the beach area in the front (lots
of footprints), a
low section of
dune and some people. People? Yes, those teeny
little dots on the right side of the picture are people!
When we were standing at the far edge of the sand, the people climbing
the
dunes looked ant size. Star Dune is about 750 feet tall!
No, I'm not
standing on that high one at the right - it was hard enough to
scramble up one of the lower parts - but I still felt like I
was on top of the world. (Both of those are
John's pictures.) 
The
picture at left is looking at a storm over the San Juan
mountains from behind the visitor center. You can see the
dune
just beginning at the right side. It links to a video that
pans
the whole area and shows pretty vividly the
contrast of desert, dune and mountain!
As it pans to the right, we see the dune rise and then the
Sangre
de Cristos appear behind and to the right of it. (It does take a minute or so to load.) I did not make camping reservations ahead of time because we just weren't sure of our route or timing this late in the trip. We had read that the walk-in camp sites typically fill up by mid-day in the summer so we weren't surprised to find it full at 3 PM. But we were a little surprised that it was full by 10 AM the next morning! People must line up early waiting for campers to leave. However, it was hot enough that we were not very disappointed to "have to" stay at an air-conditioned motel overnight.
So, when we were
tired of dune climbing, we drove into
Alamosa and were
astounded that most of the motels were full! It was around
5:30 PM, which I really didn't consider very late for mid-week, but
we tried 4
before ending up at the Inn of
the Rio Grande. We had passed
this place,
thinking it looked way too expensive for us. But it was only
$89 and that included passes to their water park (which we didn't use)
and breakfast coupons at their restaurant (which we did). It
was a very nice place, particularly for families.
We
had supper at the San Luis Valley Brewing Co.
John ordered a sampler because he wanted to try a few of their beers.
But you don't get a few - you get one of everything on tap!
He drank 6 of the 8 and, while
he
enjoyed them, none were as good as the ayle he had in
Ouray.
He had cajun catfish and I had crabcakes, both were very good.Thursday July 15
We had breakfast at Clancy's Restaurant in the hotel. Service was fine, as was the fruit and yogurt plate that we both had. Then we went back to the park to hike to the Dunes Overlook on the Ramp Trail. It was only a 2 mile roundtrip but very HOT. (Right - what do you expect in the desert in the summer?) The views were stunning and it was definitely worth it. We even found a new (to us) wildflower! It is called sand verbena. The pink "flower" in the picture at left below is not a flower at all - if you look closely, you can see those are the seed pods. The second picture on the right, that John took, shows the tiny white flowers along with the pods.
The
Ramp Trail trailhead is in Loop 2 in the campground.
There's room there for 3 or 4 cars but we did not pass a
single person either going up or down. We did, though, find
lots of interesting plants (aside from the sand verbena above).
At the right is Rocky Mountain Beeplant and to the left is a
prickly pear cactus with a single bloom. As we climbed
towards the overlook, we got some great views, too. Below on
the left is the "other end" of the dune, that isn't visible from the
Visitor Center; in the center is one segment of the trail to give
you an idea of what we were walking through. It was very
similar to the environment at the Black Canyon. At right
below is a view of the
Visitor Center and the long "beach" from near the top of the overlook.
The somewhat darker area at the left edge of the sand is the
Visitor Center and its surrounding vegetation. From this
perspective, you get an idea of how far one has to walk to actually
begin to climb the dune itself!
On the left is a
view, still along the Ramp Trail, facing the Sangre de Cristo mountains
at the west, taken as we were switch-backing up to the overlook at the
top. On the right we are posing nicely
at the top of the overlook. (Yes I was still using the glove
to protect the burned hand from sun - and it was VERY sunny up there!)
You get an idea of how far up we climbed by looking at the
top of the dune directly behind us. 
Back down from the overlook, we stopped at the
Visitor Center to get cool, to refill our water and ask the ranger
about
our mysterious plant (the verbena). I also asked him what he
knew about Zapata Falls since we had seen a sign and I am fond of
waterfalls. He
raved about it, telling us that you drive up about 3.5 miles on a
corrugated
road (at least it was wide enough for 2 cars, unlike some others we've
driven on this trip) and then hike the last half a mile to a
cave. He
gave us a little leaflet about it that elaborated further: "Once the
trail reaches the creek, you must wade into the stream, climb a short
embankment, and walk into a narrow gorge to view the falls. ...
The rushing water is cold and the rocks can be slippery, so
use good judgment as to whether or not you are up to the challenge."
[Part of the creek and the cave entrance are shown at left -
fortunately the
water level is fairly low at this time of year. The gorge is
the left hand turn at the back.]Right. That all sounded a little nuts to me, but it was so hot that cool water and a cool cave actually held some appeal, and I figured that there would be hardly anybody else there, so we decided to make that stop before we headed east.
Boy, was I wrong! I couldn't believe how many dozens of people, including a whole class of preschoolers on a field trip, were there to balance on rocks and wade through icy water to see the waterfall in a cave! I never would have guessed. We had lunch there in the picnic area – nice breeze in the shade - and then followed the crowds on up to the cave. And it really WAS fun. Below, left to right, are the upper falls, the lower falls and then I backed up a little to get (almost) the whole thing as the water tumbles into the back of the gorge. Apparently it is quite stunning in the winter when the falls freezes.
Our last view of the dune and the mountains,
taken from the picnic area at Zapata Falls, is at left. (The
dark part of the dune is shadow from a cloud). After that
adventure, we headed home. No more mountains. 
We had
supper at an Applebees in Fountain (outside Colorado Springs) and spent
the night in Limon, CO.
Although it wasn't part of the
original plan, we
made good time on Friday and, when it was time to stop,
we decided to just grab a quick supper and then keep going and
we'd be
home by around 11 PM. That decision led us to one more photo
op. A few hours later, as we drove north from Des Moines on
I-35 we were heading into a fantastic lightning storm.
Fortunately, we never actually had to drive IN the storm but
it entertained us in the distance for quite a while. Since
John was driving, I grabbed the camera and captured a segment
- click the (black) picture to the right to get a sample (and please be patient while it loads)!