Our final drive east, from Alamosa to Pueblo, over our last mountain pass (at least until we head west again in Canada), and leaving the Rockies in the rear view mirror for now.
But first, the sublime ... another day, another magnificent landscape, another wonderful National Park! Great Sand Dunes National Park, recently added to the growing list of protected fabulous places to visit in this country. This one, largely created by sand deposits brought down from the mountains by the Medano Creek and then blown back into dunes by the westerly winds that blow hard around here. Result, massive sand dunes, 200m+ high in the middle of mountains, weird! And, as it turns out, damn hard to walk on! They reckon on 1mph or 1.5kph progress on this, roughly a third to a quarter of normal walking pace. We looked at the top and decided we just didn't quite have the time - honest that was the only reason we didn't summit! Lots of families enjoying the dunes for walking and sandboarding, which looked like fun for a half competent snowboarder - ie not me! I didn't have a board anyway, phew!
But after crossing the creek with only moderately wet feet, we enjoyed a couple of hours of wandering and sitting and contemplating our navels in another amazing place. Sublime!
And so to ridiculous ... our walk today from our hotel on the outskirts of Pueblo to downtown and back again. It really did look like a lovely creek side path on the map, but having passed several sites that looked like drug dens, said hello to a considerable number of homeless people (who all returned our good mornings), and found not a single place to sit and enjoy what there was of the view, we decided to return via the suburban neighbourhoods, which was going fine until we ran out of homes and into the malls. Probably the kind of walk that precisely zero Americans would contemplate, let alone set out on. Come to think of it, not many sane people, of any nationality. We of course, being mad as a bag of frogs, loved it (well, apart from the malls at the end and having to cross a freeway!) But on the plus side, 10km walked and we love wandering the neighbourhoods and being nosy about how people live. It will surprise nobody that we saw precisely no other people walking on our way back from town to our hotel. I'm sure several people in cars thought we were bonkers - or possibly homeless.
But, and this is a big but, the coffee shop we found downtown, mid walk was one of the best; great coffee, great muffins, great service and we are still sitting outside in the warm sunshine. This of course is before we knew we had to cross mall car parks and freeways to get home again!
Last night we took the Historic Waterside Walk in downtown Pueblo, which was lovely. A gentle ramble along the Arkansas River (which does flow all the way to Arkansas, before joining the Mississippi), amongst youngsters celebrating their prom (in April?), and with several good looking bars to choose from for beer and pizza. All in all, yet another good day. As usual we are amongst the latest diners! Nearly everyone else has gone home.
Our last visit of today, having spent enough time in the sun, was to a local Air Museum. Probably not the highest priority on our bucket list, but an enjoyable way to spend an hour or so looking at bits of machinery in the company of an ex military man who was very proud of his exhibits (and rather difficult to shut up!). I don't think he had seen many tourists for a while, especially from overseas. Not much picture worthy but this is a B52 Flying Fortress like the one that dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, complete with sexist decals.
We are girding our loins now for the drive north. We know we are about to run out of good weather for a while, in fact Cheyenne in Wyoming, our next intended destination is showing snow tomorrow morning, so we will head north and stop short of there if we have to. But beyond that we have several amazing places to visit before hopefully re-entering Canada at the end of the week. And thankfully, given that the Canadian prairies had 30cm of snow just a week or so ago, the weather is looking sunny and blue sky again - but probably a good bit colder than we have had recently. It will get us used to it. We are eventually heading to Alaska after all. Tomorrow we should get to Wyoming unless the weather intervenes. Which only leaves us the Dakotas to go before and visits to family for a little while. Saskatchewan here we come! I'll leave with you with some pictures mostly from the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Another amazing place.
This sand walking is very tiring!
Beautiful
Boy and toy
Neighbourhood home in Pueblo. I'd love that verandah.
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