In mountainous areas, winter weather forecasts regularly mention “snow in the higher elevations.” We saw fresh snow on the ground in many places today, because we’re spending a lot of time at the higher elevations. With the exception of five days below 5,000 feet (Las Cruces, NM; Tucson, AZ; and Las Vegas, NV), Ted and I have been spending our days at elevations of 5,252-11,318 feet since October 13, when we arrived in Albuquerque, NM for the Balloon Fiesta. We can climb several flights of stairs and/or walk vigorously uphill without puffing, so I’d say we’re acclimated to the thinner air.
Clean fresh snow on the high mountaintops.
Clean fresh snow at our traveling elevation too. There was ice on the lake surfaces this morning.
There’s not enough snow at the ski resorts yet, so the snow machines have been busy making the ski runs usable.
We drove through Leadville, CO today and saw some very colorful houses. I remember learning that, in Alaska, people like bright-colored houses to cheer them up during the long, dark winter. Maybe that’s true in Leadville too, because there are a lot of houses painted in cheerful, bright designs.
This house is decorated in shades of blue and green. It’s hard to see, but the second house to the left is done in shades of red and pink.
This homeowner chose blue, purple, and pink for his colorful facade.
The UFO Watchtower near Hooper, CO was along our route today, so we stopped for a visit. After all, we’ve already checked out the UFO history in Roswell, NM. The Watchtower was started as a joke by a lady who bought a ranch, then found out she couldn’t successfully raise cattle on it. She knew that UFO watchers would sometimes visit her ranch after dark, so she decided to make money by building a gift shop in a saucer dome with a viewing platform.
The San Luis Valley, where the Watchtower is located, is revered among flying saucer buffs as one of the best places in the world to see UFOs. Twenty psychics have visited the site and have identified two large vortexes and outlined them with rocks. The vortex area is known as the “Healing Garden,” and tourists add items to the clutter in the stone circles.
A cautionary sign at the entrance to the Watchtower area.
The viewing platform sits beside the gift shop. The gift shop is only open on weekends this time of year, so we couldn’t purchase any alien-type items.
There are two concentric stone circles here. I could only get an (almost) semi-circle in my photo. The stone outlines are a bit hard to see through the clutter.
Here’s the Healing Garden from ground level. Name an object (preferably junky), and there is probably at least one here–ballpoint pens, single socks, a baseball, Mardi Gras beads, etc.
A recovered spaceship?
The highlight of today’s travel was Great Sand Dunes National Park. We visited this park on a trip with our kids in the middle ’80s and had a good time in the sand dunes. (Except Kari, who got an asthma attack–probably from the dust or from the 7,500-foot altitude.) It’s the only national park I can remember visiting that has no “stay on the designated trail” signs. There are no trails in the dunes, and the Park Service has apparently decided that tourists can do no harm to the sand. We didn’t even see a sign telling us not to take any rocks or sand particles out of the park.
These are the tallest sand dunes in North America. The dunefield covers thirty square miles and sits in isolation among the mountains and the desert. It looks a little out of place–like someone put it here and forgot to pick it up and put it where it belongs. Star Dune is the tallest at 750 feet; High Dune is 650 feet. Wouldn’t it be more logical for High Dune to be the tallest? Who named these dunes, the government?
Here’s a long-range shot of the Great Sand Dunes with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind them.
Here’s a picture taken at the base of the dunes.
To appreciate the size of the dunes, use the people walking on them and in front of them as a scale. You might have to zoom in on this picture to see the people on top of the tallest dune. There are five people up there. Three people are on the right of the peak, and the figure on the left at the peak is actually two people standing close to each other.
Tonight: Alamosa, CO.
Tomorrow: Taos, NM, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.