My night of bleh at the worst hotel in existence was finally over. Punctuated by any number of trains going “WOO WOO” right outside our room, Scipio and I had drifted in and out of sleep while Elizabeth slept like a blissful rock alongside us. The dog finally decided he was done resting and insisted on going outside – I looked at my phone. It was not even 6:00 a.m. yet, but the dog’s internal clock hadn’t adjusted to Mountain Time. With a groan, I staggered out of bed and fished around for his leash. Rubbing the old sleepies out of my eyes, I hooked him up and trudged to the nearest staircase. Standing outside in the pre-dawn darkness while Scipio peed in the sketchy backyard of a Quality Inn in a nothing town, I thought about the life decisions that had led me to this point. Then I bagged up Scipio’s poop, trudged back upstairs, and discovered that Elizabeth had already put out his breakfast. The hotel room was filled with the ravenous sounds of Scipio eating breakfast in the dark. I staggered back into bed. Sometimes, even the most fun trips can have bleh moments like this.
A little while later, we were all a little more awake and ready to face the day. I felt some trepidation at what the Quality Inn had for breakfast – that was a justified concern. It barely touched the lower end of acceptable, mostly because waffle-makers remain undefeated. Elizabeth and I took turns going to the lobby to grab a breakfast plate while the other took Scipio outside to avoid overstimulating him. Then I carried all of our plates back up to the room to eat there.
After such a charming stay, I know it’s a shock that we were ready to leave by 8:30. We packed up pretty quickly after I showered and I took Scipio down for one last potty break before we headed on to Colorado. While sitting in the charming backyard of the Quality Inn, another train went by, and I took this picture of it:
In the time this happened, a dude came up to Elizabeth in the parking lot, and when she started to go inside to avoid him he yelled “WAIT” at her. So you can add creepy parking lot guy to the list of reasons to hate Clayton.
A reason not to hate Clayton – Crossroads Coffee, a little coffee stand right in the downtown area along the train tracks. Although I think they messed up Elizabeth’s order slightly, they still apparently produced something good enough for her to drink, which is a giant standard to cross. And my smoothie was quite good! Once I’d convinced Scipio it wasn’t for him, even if there was whipped cream on top, I was able to enjoy it.
Elizabeth kindly offered to be the first driver on this morning, presumably in response to me doing the majority of the driving the day before. Unlike his hijinks-laden Thursday, Scipio settled down rather quickly on this morning – it probably helped that US 64/87 was a divided highway through much of this stretch, reducing the number of scary semis that zipped right next to us. Elizabeth and I took this highway out to Capulin Volcano in the summer of 2020, but everything beyond that was going to be brand new territory for us.
2 things I noted about the highway west of Capulin – the mesas continued to get larger and more dramatic, and occasionally we could glimpse the Rocky Mountains in the distance. A little bit further, when we approached Raton, small stands of trees appeared on the side of the road. And… was that… fall color?
Excitement level: 9/10!
I had the brilliant idea to check and make sure that gas wasn’t going to get a ton more expensive the moment we entered Colorado (yes, it was). So we stopped at a gas station in Raton to fill up for the weekend, even though Elizabeth still had some space in the tank. Most of the stations were sketchy, but I found a decent one with a pretty nice little lawn for Scipio to do his business on.
And yes: the Raton Mesa was really fricking cool. We got to go right over it on I-25 once we merged onto it. Raton Pass reaches an elevation of 7,834 feet north of town up through the mesa. Up there, I got more views of beautifully changing trees and shrubs from the driver’s seat. Elizabeth, unfortunately, had to deal with Scipio Construction Anxiety, so I don’t think she enjoyed it as much as me.
We drove on down the other side for a while until we came into the totally bustling metropolis of Trinidad, Colorado. Part of our plan for the weekend had been to avoid getting groceries until we got closer. Well, this was the closest (only?) Wal-Mart on the route. We pulled in – I drew the either better or worse Scipio duty, while Elizabeth drew shopping duty. I’ll never be able to tell you what the inside of the Trinidad Wal-Mart looks like, but I can tell you what the eastern slopes of the Spanish Peaks look like from County Road 20.2 southwest of Trinidad:
Scipio and I wandered around the area, waiting for Elizabeth to get out and occasionally poking our schnoots into red ant hills and learning why that was a bad idea. Eventually Elizabeth came back out; she had done a truly inspired job getting groceries, and we would not be hurting for food for the rest of the weekend. Making sure you have the right stuff to eat is an underrated task while camping; I am thankful we didn’t have to worry about that. She did, however, have to run back inside briefly to get some drinking water, which is a bit of a necessity on camping trips as well as food. But in no time at all, we were back on the road.
Right as we pulled out of Wal-Mart, Elizabeth fielded a call from Michael. The two takeaways – they would be a bit late to meeting us in Great Sand Dunes (unsurprising), and Charlie had broken up with his longtime girlfriend (very surprising). We were left to digest this news and wonder how it would affect the trip beyond Elizabeth’s assertion on my behalf that I was ready to get drunk with them. After that call, I called my dad. He did not have any similar bombshells.
We were in the home stretch of our drive to Great Sand Dunes. I realized we hadn’t yet listened to Elizabeth’s old favorite national park podcasters, the Switchbacks. I find them vaguely amusing in how they parallel Elizabeth and me, and I was certainly interested in what they had to say about Great Sand Dunes. Besides, we still had an hour to go on US-160. They shared info on how Great Sand Dunes would be a family-friendly park with things to do for people of all ages. Well, Scipio was 1. It would be good for him to have things to do!
Besides my wry amusement at the Switchbacks podcast, my other entertainment on this stretch of the drive was found looking along the mountainsides of La Veta Pass, trying to find the best fall color. There were some really pretty hillside stands of trees, although it seemed like peak color was still approaching at the lower elevations. I took a timelapse on my Go-Pro that did come out quite nicely. I’ll include a twitter link to it, even though I’m sure compression will ruin the video somewhat.
Finally, we were out of the pass and into the renowned San Luis Valley. Off to our right loomed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which are actual capital M-Mountains – the highest peak is 14,300 feet. Somewhere around the corner of the mountains were the tallest Sand Dunes in North America. Was that them? Thanks to a trick in the optics, as well as our parallel approach to the dunefield, it was kind of hard to tell where the Great Sand Dunes were long after we were passing signs touting the Great Sand Dunes just a few miles ahead. Finally, it was undeniable – those yellow-white lumps at the base of the mountains behind them were the dunes. We were there!
We pulled up to the park entrance station – as we began to move more perpendicular to the dunefields, they were definitely beginning to look more impressive. And at that elevation, the aspens were turning a vibrant gold.
Elizabeth and I obviously had an afternoon to kill before everyone else arrived. It was 1:30, we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, and had 1 to 2 campsites to set up, so there were definitely some housekeeping things to do. But the first thing we decided to do was to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve Visitor’s Center.
As you can see, the visitor’s center is located southeast of the dunes, roughly perpendicular to the path of the first dune ridgeline. This meant that when we got out of the car at the visitor’s center, we were getting our first dramatic view of the what the park looked like – why this little, remote patch of land at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos ranked among America’s 63.
Hard to disagree!
Scipio and I waited behind the visitor’s center for Elizabeth to go get her stamp, and buy her magnet. He was a bit squirrelly, so I had to separate him from the main trail heading down towards the dunes so we didn’t end up with any sort of incident. Once Elizabeth returned, we traded places, with Elizabeth holding the dog’s leash and me heading into the small visitor’s center/gift store to buy my pin. It was far from the largest visitor’s center I’d ever experienced, but it did have a quaint sort of charm, so I would say it wasn’t my least favorite.
In my quest to get some epic fall foliage, we took a short, sandy trail that led down from the visitor’s center toward the dunes in the distance. We didn’t go all the way down, but did walk far enough to see some pretty epic aspens with the dunes in the background. I also like how the cirrus here added some composition to the background.
Looking at this, I’m so annoyed that I was too dumb to figure out Elizabeth’s camera charger. The zoom lens would have been fire here.
We headed back toward the car in the visitor’s center lot, dealing with the embarrassment of Scipio jumping on a passerby along the way. Now that it was 2:00, our campsite over at the Pinon Flats Campground was open. Driving over there, I was struck by the realization that the developed area of Great Sand Dunes is really… quite tiny. It was only a couple of minutes from the visitor’s center to the campground, which represents the limit of the easily accessible part of the park. Also, the campground was… pretty cramped. I can understand why this was the case; our site had a clear view of the dunes pretty much right across the Medano Creek valley from us. You don’t get those views with a sprawling, large campground. But still, it felt like sites were squished together. That impression was confirmed when we got to our site. We had the requisite fire pit, picnic table, and bear box, and not a whole lot of space for anything else. If we set up our tent over in the corner opposite the fire ring, there was just enough room… and that was a double advantage, since the next site literally began right on the other side of the fire ring. It was quite a tight squeeze, to say nothing of the fact that Michael, Irene, and Charlie would require two tents between them. Their spot, thanks to typical Elizabeth wizardry, was just a few spots further back on the loop than ours – a walk of no more than 100 yards.
Scipio explored the campsite under our watchful eyes while I did my best Pack Mule impression to schlep everything up to the site. We’ve put up our tent in a dozen different places; the view from this site was one of the better ones. To our north and east, the Sangres rose imposingly all the way to and above the tree lines. To our west, the dunes made a striking contrast with the afternoon sky. Scipio didn’t love the part of putting up the tent where Elizabeth went inside the tent without him, and tried to make his own new route inside. Despite that, we kept him entertained enough to let us get the tent set up in our little nook.
At this point, my tummy was rumbling. All I’d had to eat all day was a motley collection of breakfast-type foods at the cursed Quality Inn, and a strawberry banana smoothie afterwards. It was mid-afternoon and Elizabeth’s planning and grocery shopping called for sandwiches. It was a glamorous meal – turkey and cheese on bread, shared on a picnic table and eked out with some of the finer snacks in life – Pop-Tarts, Hot Cheetos, leftover Chex mix from our engagement party a week prior. Scipio lapped water under the table in the meantime.
Okay, we’d set up our campsite and killed a little time. Elizabeth’s cousins still hadn’t arrived yet, and the afternoon was still pretty young. I suggested that we drive down to the dunefield and take a closer look for ourselves. After all, it’s literally only a 3-minute drive from the campground. Clouds had filled the sky while we ate, not necessarily menacing rain, but at least bringing with them an increase in the wind. Note that Great Sand Dunes knows what it’s doing when it mentions the prevailing and storm wind directions on its map. It turns out that being at 8,000 feet, with mountains at your back, and a giant, impossibly flat valley to your southwest is a prime opportunity for BIG WINDS. The big winds began to pick up just in time for their first major impact on our trip.
The parking area literally brings you right down to Medano Creek, which at this time of year isn’t a creek so much as it’s a giant sandy beach at the end of the dunes. We walked out onto the sand, trying to avoid other people so that Scipio wouldn’t get too overwhelmed. The first little area was sheltered, and the sand was the perfect temperature for walking barefoot.
Then we got out into the wind.
Imagine having little speckles of buckshot constantly being blasted into your ankles. There’s no way to avoid it. No cover anywhere in sight. The only thing you can do is face the other way and hope you don’t get sand in your eyes. And, well, if you ride a little closer to the ground…
Life gets pretty rough out in the dune fields when it’s windy. We beat a hasty retreat out of the exposed area and back toward the more sheltered area by the trees. Although I wish it had been sunnier, this let me take some more pictures of aspens.
We decided to stop this form of Scipio torture altogether, and prepare for a different moment of truth. Elizabeth’s cousins were en route and would be arriving at Great Sand Dunes shortly, with Tucker the golden retriever in tow. Scipio is not always the best with meeting new people, and he’s really not always the best with meeting bigger dogs. Especially bigger dogs when he’s on a leash. Especially bigger dogs that don’t want to play with him. I know Elizabeth was feeling as apprehensive as I was as Michael’s Find My Friends location drew closer on Elizabeth’s phone. We walked over to their campsite to greet them. A big old rental car pulled up and into the parking spot, and out piled Charlie, Michael, Irene, and Tucker. Scipio immediately went on high alert. BARKBARKBARKBARKBARK. Greetings were somewhat altered by the mere fact that I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my own dog, straining at the leash. I hung my head in shame. They were understanding, but also, you can only put up with so much before it gets annoying.
Fortunately, one of the Harding brothers is apparently a dog whisperer, and David had taught Michael some of his tricks. Michael grabbed the leash from me, and started to walk down the campsite loop, with Tucker on one side and Scipio on the other. It was like a switch had been flipped. Now Scipio was slowly building trust in Michael, and acting like Tucker wasn’t even there.
This didn’t mean that the rest of the weekend went smoothly. Far from it – Scipio is still a herding dog, and he still gets overly excited when people stand up and start walking around him. The sight of Tucker continued to make him uneasy all weekend, and he certainly was still prone to fits of reasonless barking. But the worst case – him being such a terror that the trip was ruined – never really came to pass. Scipio even let Michael and Irene pet him at various points.
Daily was rapidly starting to fade at Great Sand Dunes National Park. It had been a long, long day since the dog had jolted me awake in Clayton that morning. We helped Elizabeth’s cousins get set up at their campsite – Charlie was borrowing our extra tent that we had gotten for Pam to use in Wyoming, as well as our spare air mattress. Michael and Irene’s tent, of 2020 derecho fame, lived on enough to make the trip here. Michael, Charlie and I walked down to the general store to buy firewood. While we were there, I learned a very important fact: a bundle of wood was not a cord of wood. I asked for three cords, which apparently would have been filed under “overkill”, as Google is currently informing me that a cord of wood is 128 cubic feet. To each their own, I see no problem with that amount. Anyway, the general store turned out to be little more than a shed with a cash register stuck in it, but the lady at the register was very nice, and the guys stocking the wood let us have the pick of the litter, so to speak. I appreciate how nice people working/volunteering at national parks always are.
The sun was going down back at the Harding campsite. With the little remaining daylight left, I scrambled to gather some of our lanterns and food stuff, since I hate grabbing that stuff after dark. It just makes life much harder. Scipio was not thrilled to not be a free range dog, but we settled the problem of him possibly wandering into trouble by putting his leash under a big rock, so he could get cozy behind Elizabeth and my chair, but not cause a ruckus. He handled that position better than I anticipated, if I’m being honest.
The lighters I had packed… sucked. Maybe it was the ever-present, swirling wind that kept us from being able to get a flame going on the lighters, but it certainly wasn’t an “out of charges” issue. One of them was fresh from the box, and we’ve since used both lighters in our apartments. Whatever the cause, the poopiness of the lighters combined with our lack of fire-starters to render the process of getting a campfire going… difficult. I’d actually planned on us cooking dinner on the stove, but Michael and Charlie wouldn’t have it any other way. So we struggled for a while, and threw little pieces of grass and twigs into the pit, and clicked and clicked and clicked and clicked the lighter, until finally a tiny flame caught on a woodchip and we eagerly coaxed it up the firewood hierarchy. Soon, we had a roaring campfire. I threw the cast iron on to start heating it up to make dinner, which tonight was an interesting camping combo. Elizabeth had found a recipe in our camping cookbook that listed how to make curry over the fire; we sort of simplified it, you could say. Instead of *making* curry, we were going to make Uncle Ben’s instant rice and throw pre-cooked chicken and curry powder and sauce into it. It sounds ratchet, right? But the most ratchet of meals is delicious when you’re camping. Soon we were ladeling seconds onto our plates, and then cooking some hot dogs over the fire and experimenting by putting curry on top of it. The mashup was delicious. You’d think this was a camping-only delicacy, right? Well, I later learned that currywurst is definitely a thing in Germany, so humans have intentionally made that meal when they had a choice.
One thing I’d hoped to do in one of the two nights at Great Sand Dunes was to get some shots of the night sky. The park boasts one of the darker night skies available in the western U.S, especially out in the dunefield. Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be Friday night that we pulled it off on – a deck of cirrus clouds moved in from the west, while upslope cloud cover kept the overhead sky obscured. We were left to enjoy a nice, cool evening by the campfire
Then came the alcohol.
As I alluded to earlier, Charlie was dealing with the aftershocks of breakup. This weekend was intended to be a bit of a tonic for his soul. Michael, in fact, had bought a $100 bottle of Tennesee’s finest tonic for the soul, and Elizabeth had thrown me under the bus by volunteering me to drink with them. At 8,000 feet, this was courting disaster, but of course I was game to do anything to help Charlie. Still, I insisted on starting on the sour side of life:
And from there, I went on to Michael’s inexhaustible supply of IPAs, before finally I was forced to join the Harding brothers in drinking whiskey straight out of the cup. The increased cost of the whiskey did not make it taste better, contrary to what I expected. But it did get everyone except Elizabeth and Irene drunk.
I’m not sure how the night progressed from there, although I definitely recall Elizabeth being exasperated only in the way that sober people around drunk people can be. To that I can only say, “she got what she signed up for”. I know that Charlie ended up sprawled out on the ground before too long, while Michael challenged me to a weird version of a drinking game where we had to list consecutive prime numbers. I got bored of the game not long after 100, having relied pretty heavily on him being too drunk to notice when I was wrong. Before too long, Charlie had passed out in his tent and Elizabeth and I were taking Scipio back to ours. It was the perfect temperature for a night in a tent – the only problem was a persistent wind blowing down off of the Sangre de Cristos straight to us. Normally, the tent blowing around causes me to lose sleep, but not in this case. Once I’d convinced Scipio that he wanted to sleep up against my back, he curled under the comforter. One eventful, often stressful day down – tomorrow should be more of the former and less of the latter.
