Day 15 – Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO to Royal Gorge, CO to Wheat Ridge, CO

Miles driven today: 325 Cumulative miles: 3594 Daniel woke me up at 2:00am saying he couldn’t sleep. I told him that he could read and the light wouldn’t bother me. He said that he had been trying to go to sleep for a half hour and every time he heard a noise, he thought it was a bear. I had been a little scared earlier about the bears, but forgot about it once I fell asleep. We ended up taking the sleeping bags and pillows to the car where Daniel read and I wrote for the next hour before managing to fall asleep again (no bear sightings). We got up again at 8:30am and took down camp. We drove the short distance to the Dunes parking lot. We spent probably an hour and a half walking out in the dunes and still only made it a little beyond the foothills. Every step was laborious and the wind was filled with sand. I took my camera out for some photos before it picked up too much. When we got to the point where we wanted to turn around, I couldn’t even take out the camera to get the shot I wanted (the bigger dunes with the mountains behind them) because we were afraid the sand would pit the expensive filter and get into the camera. We left the park at 11:00am and drove for a while before stopping at Sonic in Salida, CO. We went through the drive-thru and just ordered drinks. When we were the second car from the window, someone came out to give us our order and take our money since the car in front of us had an order that was taking longer. Daniel looked in the rearview mirror to see if he had enough room to back up and get out of line. He saw the car behind us getting closer. Then our car lurched forward. I thought Daniel had accidentally killed the engine, but he said “We just go run into.” I got out and looked at the back bumper. The woman who ran into us shouted “Sorry! I was looking at the car behind me.” I’m not sure how that makes her take her food off the brake and run into us. The damage was minimal (just some scratches on our bumper from the bolts that hold on her license plate). Daniel and I decided that it wasn’t worth exchanging info and filing a claim (and neither of us were injured from the impact at less than 1 mph), so we just went about our business. I’m a little bummed as this is the first ding of any kind to the Element and we have less than 11,000 miles on it. On the other hand, if that’s the worst that happens to us this whole trip, then I think we’re in pretty good shape. We continued on and got to the Royal Gorge around 2:45pm. I was a bit appalled because the last time I was here (though it was probably 20 plus years ago) I recall there being a bridge to walk or drive across, a cable car in which you could ride across, or an incline rail car to take you to the bottom of the gorge to see the Arkansas River. There was likely a gift shop, maybe one other building, and a train down in the gorge. Now, however, there is an entire mini-amusement park built around the bridge and an admission fee of $23 per person to go inside. I asked if there was a bridge only ticket we could buy and was told there was a bridge only discount – if we got out of the park and back to the ticket window in less than an hour, we could get $7 back per person, making it $16 each. We decided to go ahead and do it since we were there. We went inside the park, walked the entire span of the suspension bridge, looked down the 1,053 feet to the Arkansas River, tried to buy funnel cake but found most of the shops and concessions closed, paid a quick visit to the gift shop and found mostly crap not even related to Royal Gorge, and then left. We skipped the carousel, petting zoo, and the few other attractions (I don’t even know that the zoo was open and there was definitely no old west gum show while we were there). In all, we spent 47 minutes in the park, so we got our discount. Our friends that we are visiting in Denver were just here last weekend for their first anniversary. They had a great time, but the differences were that they had at least a day to spend at Royal Gorge and were able to take the lunch train and it was also before Labor Day, so the park was still fully open. I’m sure it would be more enjoyable that way and I probably wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who just has an hour or two to spend there. We continued on headed towards Cripple Creek. I was navigating and told Daniel to go a different way than the signs indicated. I was using Streets and Trips and the atlas and saw that the route I had picked had an unpaved road, but at least it was listed as a country road (CR-9) instead of just ‘local road.’ It ended up that this route was part of “The Golden State Back Country Bi-way” (or something like that). The scenery was very pretty, the road wasn’t too rough, and we got to see remnants of old mines along the way. We got into Cripple Creek around 5:30pm. This is another place that has changed significantly since I last visited. Instead of the small, old mining town with charm where I first ate a buffalo burger and panned for gold, it is now a fairly commercial town with a big casino. Daniel and I decided to just drive through Cripple Creek and take with us the fact that at least the drive there was pretty. We had considered driving up to Florissant Fossil Beds from here, but we were both getting a little burnt out on driving and still had about two hours before we would reach our friends’ place outside of Denver, so we decided to skip Florissant. We passed Pikes Peak along the way. It is 14,115 feet tall, 3,000 feet taller than Mt. Hood in Oregon (11,249 feet), but seems much smaller since the surrounding area is already at about 6.000 feet (whereas Portland is at 76 feet above sea level and the area closer to Mt. Hood isn’t a whole lot higher). Pikes Peak is also a big dirt mountain caused by uplift with a road and train up to the top rather than being a volcano with glaciers and no road to the peak like Mt. Hood. We may try to drive back down to Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods tomorrow from Denver, but we aren’t 100% sure yet. We got to Dave and Amanda’s (Amanda is my best friend from undergrad – she met Dave and moved here a little more than three years ago) in Wheat Ridge, CO at about 7:40pm. I had told them earlier in the day we would be in about 7:30pm, so ten minutes off (because of traffic and construction) isn’t too bad. Dave had already left to set up for his band’s (Visitor 8) show, so we hung out and chatted with Amanda until 8:30pm when we left to go to the show. Amanda took us on the scenic route to show us the two other places she had lived and where she works. We got to the venue (a community arts center) at 9:00pm and headed inside for the opening act. I can’t say I’m a big fan of computer-generated electronic ‘music’ accompanied by occasional banging on pans or drums and singing/ talking into a microphone hooked up to some sort of voice-altering synthesizer, but I do applaud the one man act for having the confidence to get up and perform in front of everyone. I’m still not quite sure I understand the black vinyl outfit and five masks (one on each side of his head, plus front, back, and top, too) he was wearing. I’ll just take it as an expression of art and leave it at that. We all headed outside about half way through the performance so we could talk. Dave’s band had less than an hour before they were supposed to go on and their guitarist still hadn’t shown up, hadn’t called, and had his phone turned off. Long story short, he said he had to work several hours late and couldn’t call anyone and the band had to cancel about 15 minutes before they were supposed to play. Dave was bummed that we didn’t get to see them play, but he showed us his drum set before he took it down and packed it up. We went to the bar down the street for a quick beer, back to Dave and Amanda’s to drop off Dave’s drums and a car, then to Village Inn for dinner (not a whole lot of options for sit-down dinners after 11:00pm). We made it back to the house about 12:30am and went to bed. Wildlife seen: mule deer, hawks, bighorn sheep Miles hiked: ~2.0