Sand dunes, alligators, neighbors . . .
August 5, 2009

Red-faced I am. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I forgot to proofread yesterday’s travelogue/blog/trog, and sent it out with typos. I corrected the blog, but the email shall forever stand as my shame. Overreacting? Perhaps, but as the most compulsive editor and critic of careless language usage, I oughtta be ashamed, and am.

Ah well, life goes on despite my failings.

On our way to our day’s activities, I spotted an unusual livestock set-up, requiring us to u-turn to determine just what it was. The farm sported three very large silos that turned out to be milk storage facilities. The odd pens I had seen were little calf houses that looked like oversized dog igloos each with an adjoining tiny individual pen, obviously housing for veal calves.

Argh! I was so happy that I had ceased eating veal long ago. Now what possible difference could it make if the beef is butchered young or a bit later? I have no idea and have no need for rationality in this, or any other case. All I know is I don’t eat veal and hold no judgment regarding anyone else’s choices in this matter.

I will digress for a moment to our neighbors: again, grandparents with grandchildren. This Texas (Arlington, to be exact) couple annually take their small travel trailer out for a week with two granddaughters, now about eight and ten, usually including the girls’ uncle, probably in his 40s, so they can all remain close. Sometimes, the other son and/or some wives join them. It’s extremely close quarters, making it even more remarkable that all seem to enjoy this time together. And how impressive that the uncle does this every year to have the time with his parents and nieces.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park was our initial destination this day. I really had little idea what to expect, but could never have conjured this anomaly. Here we have the vast tabletop flatness of the San Luis Valley, ringed gloriously by mountain ranges at every juncture. So far, all is not unexpected; however, up in the northeast corner of this expanse, the wind and topography have joined forces to deposit mountains(!) of undulating sand.

Size becomes relative when the dune range is viewed as a backdrop to the wide reaches of the valley and as the approach to the majestic Sangre de Cristo mountains just beyond. We discovered just how relative when we saw the line of almost indistinguishable ants, no, they’re really people, climbing up onto the 750-foot peak of the dunes. The sand was dwarfed by the peaks behind them, but in reality, was huge, both in height and area - 30 square miles.

We read and heard about Medano Creek that ran around the base of he dunes, but even that was incomprehensible until experienced. The stream bed is up to about a quarter-mile wide and flat as the proverbial pancake. Spring runoff evidently creates a running creek of sorts, a few inches deep across the entire expanse. As the season progresses, the water recedes into the upper reaches.

Drawn by the lure of water always, we determined to walk up the stream bed until we came to water, and walk we did for nearly two miles. As we began, we were in dark damp sand; eventually, rivulets of clear water greeted us as they randomly wandered around the flatness, dividing and rejoining in endless ropy patterns.

The most fun of it was watching the people. Yes, there were children playing in the sand and water, but a large proportion of the folks enjoying the wetness were adults. It was the cutest ever to see many “grownups” lying in the creek bed, digging bathing pools with their hands, building fantabulous sand cities, damming up the flow to capture it for themselves.

As far up as we walked, the water never deepened, just continued wandering merrily. It doesn’t cut a channel because the groundwater is already right at the surface. When one digs in a toe to make a depression, it immediately fills with water from beneath.

Finally, we determined we must get up into the dunes. It would be ludicrous, after all, to visit Great Sand Dunes and not climb a sand dune now, wouldn’t it. My chosen target was what I might term a foothill. That particular mound appealed to me because I could see that the creek wound around behind it; therefore, I would go up and over, come down the other side back into the creek bed, and stroll back in water, albeit it not enough to cover my feet. By the way, Medano is created from snow melt, but the temperature is barely below body temp, just enough to refresh.

We begin our ascent wearing sandals that we had discarded while in the creek bed. Wow, that was hard work, to put it very mildly. We trudged, we struggled, we worked, we sank and spewed sand as we lifted our feet again and again. Our little foothill began to seem insurmountable, but we persisted. After all, right over the summit, I would see welcome Medano Creek.

“The best laid plans of mice and men” and all that . . . right over the summit was . . . more sand. Ah well, no use to turn back, onward we go sinking, laboring with muscles that are beyond weary until we see the watercourse once again. Oh, too bad, it appears to be accessible only via a very, very steep cliff of sand, an incline that I am not inclined to attempt. No way, say I. If I tried to go down that, I would fall, I would tumble, I would be a roly-poly bug all the way until I landed on my keester at the bottom.

No really, it’s okay, says Chris, we can do it. This coming October we will celebrate(?) 30 years of marriage. Shouldn’t I have figured it out by now? But nooo, despite my misgivings, I give in and agree to make the descent. It’s so steep that I am afraid. Just dig in your heels, he advises, and so I do. Here we go, digging in our heels, not falling, not tumbling. And then: aaaiiiyeee! it’s burning, oh my god, it hurts beyond hurting! Our feet are burning; they’re on fire; we’re screaming like little girls. I would welcome tumbling pell-mell, anything to make it stop hurting. Our careful descent turns into a frantic loping slide. And just when we are sure the skin is gone, we are burned down to our toe bones, we hit the wet sand, run for the water and soothe our nearly blistered appendages.

So now the real question is: will I go along next time or has this been the one event to finally bring me to my senses?

We walk in Medano (they pronounce it Med-a-no, but I think the proper pronunciation in Spanish, at least, would be Me-da-no) Creek all the way back to the visitors’ center. Truthfully, our feet continue to burn most of the way, but we have survived the self-inflicted ordeal.

Later, we drive a rough dirt road further up the canyon, park and walk to a place where we can eat our sandwiches across the creek from the east end of the dunes. Then I see two ants, no people, over on the dunes. Through the binoculars, we barely discern that they are climbing the dunes carrying boards (dune boards? boogie boards? sand boards?) and at long last, stand wide-stanced upon them rocking back and forth until they sail down the slope. Actually, I was dumbfounded that anyone would spend that much time and effort (remember, I know whereof I speak at this point) to get up there in order to slide back down. To each his own . . .

Another adventure, now left behind, we realize that this is an area to which we must return. There is the Medano/Zapata Ranch, now a Nature Conservancy property, to check out. We want to drive/hike into Zapata Waterfall, hike in the alluring Sangre de Cristo Mountains, fish the San Luis Lakes State park and lots more. What a gorgeous area!

We make our way to the town of Hooper to see the only alligator farm in Colorado. By dint of a geothermal 87-degree well, that former tilapia farm now houses more than 400 alligators (never again will Chris talk me into kayaking in alligator waters), tortoises everywhere, gigantic pythons and boas in abundance, in addition to numerous reptiles of every shape and description. The place is stinky beyond stinky, but fascinating enough to keep our attention. Those creature all look dead, more or less, but the size and number of those teeth convince me that I am no match for their strength. And I thought I had to go to Louisiana or Florida to view these animals that hold so much fascination for me.

There are many “points of interest” along the roadways here and we stop to read them all. Near the dunes, we see and learn about a place that Zebulon Pike and his party camped before they were captured by Spaniards on whose land they trespassed near here on the Conejos River. The history of this area is surpassed only by its natural beauty. We are intrigued by the canyons we see in the Sangre de Cristos.

Back home, we are surprised that we have almost no hummingbirds here; our feeder remains full. In Pagosa, we could barely keep them fed. New bird for the trip: northern rough-winged swallow.

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