September 15, 2012

I posted to my blog last night but I’m not yet up to date.  Late in the afternoon on Tuesday while we were in Hancock we watched as the clouds began rolling over the tops of the mountains and the rain moving in.  Most of our drive back to camp was in showers and the rain set in all day Wednesday.  We spent the day just driving around looking at the area.  First we stopped at the visitor’s center in Poncha Springs then into Salida and drove through the old part of town.  The stores are touristy so we just enjoyed looking at the architecture of the old buildings and homes.  From there we drove east along the Arkansas River for a while before heading back to Poncha Springs then south over Poncha Pass.

We finished our tour with a visit to the Elevation Brewery between Salida and Poncha Springs.  There we shared a sampler of 6 very different beers.  There were two I really liked but only one was bottled so we purchased two 750 mL bottles of Signal de Botrange which is described as “a farmhouse ale aged in chardonnay wine barrels.”  Alcohol content is 7.5% so I will wait to enjoy these at home.

On Thursday we arrived at the Oasis RV Park just outside of the Great Sand Dunes National Monument and Park.  After 6 days of dry camping it is nice to “be connect to the grid” again.  This is not the kind of place we would normally choose but we have full hook-ups so we are catching up on laundry and getting the batteries charged.

I find it difficult to describe the Great Sand Dunes.  As we look at them from the camper it looks like a big sand pile that someone made and it changes with the wind.  What is impossible to get your mind around is the size.  We visited the park and dunes Friday and I walked to the edge of the dunes and knew I had to come back prepared to hike up a ways.  Between the elevation and my “middle age spread” I did not expect to make the top but did hope to make it about half way up, which I did (well maybe half way).

As you would expect hiking the Dunes is difficult as the sand is very fine and very deep.  My GPS showed that I walked 1.53 miles and went from 8060 feet in elevation to 8217 then down to 8035 before getting back to the car.  My GPS uses topographical data to show elevation, it does not calculate it. As the landscape here changes day to day take my climb figures with a grain of sand (I couldn’t resist).  All that being said I was pooped when I got finished.

The coolest part was that most of the evidence of yesterday’s visitors was gone; the winds removed most traces of any tracks.  One dune that yesterday had a steep drop off of 10 – 15 feet yesterday was today a little mound.  What you could find if you looked was animal tracks.  I saw at least two kinds of rodent, deer and coyote.  There was even one spot where the coyote caught the rodent and there was evidence of a brief struggle.

Every once in a while a little clump of grass will stick up out of the sand.  You can see where the sand then blows in and raises the ground level and tiny ridges under the grass where the blades droop over and rub arcs in the sand as the wind blows through them.

We drove through the Dunes Campground on Friday and Saturday.  It was very nice with asphalt roads and pads.  They do have a dump station and fresh water but no electricity.  Many of the spaces would be tight for us but no problem for smaller rigs.  We could manage in about 20% of the sites.  We would have stayed there if not for our dirty laundry.

Tomorrow we are moving on, we’ve talked of south into New Mexico or maybe farther west.  Today is a kind of reorganize and rest up day.