“There might be bugs, dirt, chills, stubbornly diminished fires and dry food. But a single night sky of pardoned stars makes it all worth it.” – Old Sean
A Swing Through Taos
After starting on a road trip with two college friends, Krone and Evan, we spent our first night recuperating from a strong push across West Texas before spending a fun day in Santa Fe. The following morning, we left, gradually improving our packing skills while heading towards Alamosa for our first camping night.
Instead of driving straight towards Alamosa, we instead made a looping detour through Taos. Our morning was spent weaving through mountains and following low, white-water streams that would define most of our journey.
Eventually, upon reaching Taos, we found most of the interesting stuff I had wanted to see north of the city (Tiwa Kitchen and Taos Pueblo) was closed due to COVID and the local natives unwilling to risk tourists.
So instead, we loitered around the old town area, walking through Kit Carson Park and making a couple of small purchases at Moxie Fair Trade and Handmade, including some miniature totems for Krone and some hair-bands for Evan’s Einstein mane.
We began to wander out of the city, stopping at Guadalajara Grill for a heavy lunch, which promptly put most of us into a mild food coma. Even better, we managed to stop at one of my visits from childhood, Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which overlooks the extremely stark and fun-to-hike Rio Grande far, far below.
Into Alamosa
At this point, Evan took over the driving and we pushed faster towards Alamosa, needing daylight for the rest of our activities.
I snoozed while Evan spotted unique features on the drive, such as a gigantic 40-person game of some version of volleyball. It was being played by a hoard young Amish men on the side of the road, their buggies resting around the field.
We finally made it to Alamosa and decided to take a short drive around the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge, which is blessedly free entry.
These marshlands are home to legions of migratory birds, but we came at a poor time of the year. For the most part, all we saw were thin canals, patches of unstable ice, the odd fluttering bird skirting away from our car, miles of pressed, brown grass all with stark and proud Blanca Peak (or as Krone would say, Blanco) standing snow-capped in the background.
The Grand Dunes of America
We didn’t linger long, however, because we had arrived in Alamosa specifically as a launching point to reach Great Sand Dunes National Park. Driving north, we soon saw the oddly blurry line of rising sand tucked under taller mountain counterparts.
We wandered inside, stopping at the visitor center for extremely brief directions before reaching the base of the dunes.
The wind was cold in the air, but the sand amongst the dunes is well-cooked by a cloudless sky. Most people walking through wandered barefoot, and we followed the tradition. Despite the chill in the air, the sand kept our toes warm. Small pebbles occasionally massaging the bottoms of our feet.
First, we walked through Medano Creek, a perfectly shallow, warm-watered apparition that separated the dunes from us, never rising above our toes.
It was then we began our most difficult hike. Unacclimated to the new highlands, unaccustomed to sliding sands beneath our step, braced on uphill slopes and swaying slightly as the heat balanced out, we wandered with mountains on our backs.
When the sand grew too hot for our toes, we burrowed them down a few inches, finding blessed moisture and chills just below the surface.
A Day Upon the Dunes
Describing the shifting dunes is unusual, as they’re a series of snaking hills, ever shifting with constant, slipping footprints clambering up the ridge. Breaths come in shudders and collapsing on the sand for occasional rests is a popular pastime.
Where the sand has solidified, tiny gouts of brown desert grass anchors itself on impossibly steep slopes. People with sleds and snowboards struggle up to precipitous drops, leaving miniture avalanches of displaced sand to stream after them. Crows wheel overhead and other wildlife is scarce.
All of this has dozens of dispersed people wandering about, taller mountains to the east viewing their progress stoically.
While climbing the great dunes was beautiful, I wouldn’t call it relaxing. However, running back down the dunes is a very entertaining sprint.
Feet are sucked in by heavy impact only to be released by shifting sands as the ground shakes on each side of the dune with every step. Huge marks are left in the ground to display a person’s path, only to vanish in the wind later on.
Undersand Snowseeker
In another cool event, Evan and I found a collapsed portion of the dune with what appeared to be a white pipe running along the length. On closer inspection, however, it was a perfectly compressed and covered layer of snow that sand had long since blown over and successfully insulated. Footprints above this ridgeline pressed outward, where sand had frozen and expanded.
Finally sated with our time at Great Dunes, we wandered next to find a campsite. Our original plan to camp within Great Dunes was a non-starter, since our vehicle wasn’t reliable on the primitive roads heading north and numerous campgrounds were shut down for the season. We decided our best bet would be to look for a Bureau of Land Management campground back the direction we came.
Soon, we would be putting our little Equinox through her paces as we rocked and tilted up Zapata Ridge, seeking out a campsite high in the mountains. North Zapata Ridge finally yielded an open camping spot for us gazing west, and we set about with unpracticed and rusty hands to set up camp.
Amateur Cold Camping
The tent was pitched, firewood was painstakingly gathered, veggies and summer sausages were sizzled and fried in a heavy pan for dinner while the sun set spectacularly.
The marshes that made up Alamosa’s wetlands grew silver in the sun’s reflection, more beautiful afar than up close. Lights in the valley’s towns began to flicker to life, impossibly weak until the sun fully set, splashing deep orange in streaks across the sky.
The air grew freezing, and we took turns layering up and attempting to start our fire, but gnarled wood, snow-wet ground and stony earth prevented us from getting a spark.
This was our harshest night camping, without the proper gear or techniques. We attempted to share blankets, but they kept rolling and twisting away as we slept. Our sleeping pads weren’t able to inflate properly in the thin air and the tent didn’t warm perceptibly despite being sealed.
However, our night was still fun. Until sleep took us, we used a few dice to play DnD, imagining characters hiking through an Orc oasis town with sandstone buildings where their underground water supply had vanished.
True Sky
Then, finally, before the day had ended, we looked outside to find the moon had set, the sun had vanished and stars dominated the sky, so prolific that blackness seemed outnumbered and spots swam in my vision.
The following morning, we staggered to our feet, quick to pack up camp with chilly and numb fingers. Our next destination was Denver, where we planned to stay the night to relax near one of my old favorite camp sites in Colorado, Sugarloaf campground.
We edged our way towards Interstate 25 and wove north, stopping in Walsenburg for breakfast. Diner food restored us, and we continued to push onward, eventually making it towards Colorado Springs.
Base of Rockies
It was here we stopped at Starr Kempf’s Kinetic Sculptures, enormous rotating sculptures of odd birds perched on the front yard of the artist himself. The wind was still, so the sculptures only moved slightly, but they caught the Colorado sun with resonance as we piled back into our car and drove north again.
Our next stop was the Garden of the Gods, the crowning stone fins of Colorado Springs. Great slabs of red stone fan and spear outwards in an endless crown of red, white and brown. Certified climbers brave the well-worn rocky surfaces and the lower ones were climbable by even causal visitors. The trails were well-paved and the hike was casual, with lots of time to catch our breath and stretch our legs.
Naturally, my favorite thing about the Garden of the Gods is it’s namesake. Originally called Red Coral Rock by European explorers, two surveyors who helped establish Colorado Springs, men named Beach and Cable inadvertently altered it forever.
Beach claimed the area would be a great place for a beer garden. His companion, Cable, was a little more poetic and insinuated that it was a beer garden fit for gods. Hence, the name Garden of the Gods became the grandiose title of this land.
Because beer.
A Iced-Denver Moment
We next headed into Denver planning on camping, but a blast of cold air brushed our cheeks and the sky began to dip low, pregnant with impenetrable grey clouds. Freezing rain pattered around us, and our wing mirrors were spattered unusable with frozen droplet refractions.
We cruised cautiously into a restaurant with Wi-Fi for lunch to make plans. Pokeco, a Poke Bowl Restaurant put us up with ice cream mochi balls for a time while we hashed out an admittedly shaky game plan.
Camping for the night was out. After the previous night of chilled weather, none of us were eager to sit in the mountains, encased in clouds while freezing rain and snow, hoping our flimsy tent would keep us comfortable.
Instead, we decided to visit Cabela’s to restock on camping gear for our next night under the stars. In the meantime, we would push towards Wyoming and try to punch through the incoming storm, rather than risk getting stalled out by it.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve fled Denver to escape entrapment by a snow storm, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s still strange it happened twice.
Storm Escapist
We recovered briefly and unhealthily at a gas station for secondary snacks before speeding ahead. The freezing rain turned towards icy sleet, which turned to painfully slick roads, which turned to true snow powder which turned, eventually to wind walls slamming and shaking our vehicle.
Points to Evan for driving us through the last leg. The scenery was uneventful, with grey fog causing the ground to match the sky exactly, eventually turning dark as an unseen sun departed from the sky.
When we finally saw the clouds break, it was almost an optical illusion. A hazy pale yellowish streak cracked across the sky, appearing like a thin bridge drilled into the side of a nearby mountain.
We passed this breach towards safer roads, spotting a Bison farm before finally reaching Casper, Wyoming in the wee hours of the morning. There, a painfully chatty receptionist who thought “We looked like thieves from that one movie” kept us in the lobby for half an hour until we were finally granted a room for the night.
Within minutes, sleep crashed down on my ears and I cuddled a pillow in a green sleeping bag while Evan and Krone roosted in the twin beds.
Until the next day of driving,
Best regards and excellent trails,
Old Sean
Written April 19th 2021
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The GoPro Hero Black is my go to Action camera. I’m not comfortable bringing my cell phone to many wet and rugged locations, so the GoPro does most of my photographic heavy-lifting. The only things I bring in my GoPro kit are the camera, a spare battery and the forehead mount. I upgrade my GoPro once every two years. It was particularly excellent to have during my aquatic tour of Belize.
