Day 15: Great Sand Dunes

We enjoyed nice breakfast with some green chili sauce in a burrito and cranberry juice. We took also few banana's for the road, which was a nice addition for the non-fruit holiday so far. We left Santa Fe and set the course towards our first real National Park - the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado. After passing the state border of New Mexico and Colorado the scenery changed to include snow-topped mountains and valleys. We reached the Rocky Mountains area.

The Great Sand Dunes was beautiful. It is a big sand dune area by the side of the mountains. When we drove to the entrance, we were told that it is nice "Visit National Parks for free" week. Excellent! Six dollars saved! The dutch person was very happy and said we should now visit as much National Parks as we can ;)

King of the hill (or dune)

Reflections

Well relaxed travelers :)

Dunes & perfect weather

Walking in the stream

Overview of the dunes

We walked in the dunes for few hours and got somewhat an idea what it would be like in the Sahara. Extremely hot sand, with very deceptive distances (looked short, felt long!). We climbed on top of one of the dunes, and A got an idea what it is like to be an asthmatic. Even though it was only aroud 2,6 km in altitude, you could already feel the oxygen levels decreasing. The landscape was breathtaking, with big dunes surrounded by snowy mountains. There was a small river also, which apparently can be much bigger but this year there was not so much snow. The only thing missing were sliders, so we could've do some sand dune downhill sliding :)

After the National Park we headed off to Colorado Springs. The drive took us through beautiful Alps-like scenery with the max altitude of 2850 km. Also our car is maybe designed more for the beach boulevards of Florida than mountain roads in Colorado. Luckily the drivers are excellent ;)

There are over 100 satellite radio channels with very clear descriptions of the content, as you can see below :-) We have usually either some pop thing or news (which are quite amazing with the republican minded channels).

We checked in to a Travelodge motel that was both cheap and good, the best price-quality ratio so far. There was even a pool table which we used in th evening, R ending up winning both times. Grrr... We seriously wonder how they make money here. It seems also the further north we go, the cheaper the accomodation. Ipad has a nice Tripadvisor app, which we have used often to find places to go, eat and sleep. This time it suggested that within 0,5 mile there's a really good Rudy's bbq place. It was interesting system, we went to a line and first there was a big pool filled with ice full of drinks. We picked up lemonande and beer for the beer drinker and headed onwards. Then there was a shelf fol cold starters. We took some potato salad and coleslaw and moved on.

Then we got to the cashier, and we said we are first time here. The cashier provided samples of the different meat they have and told what are the most popular ones. We took some roasted beef and pork ribs accompanied with green chillistew and one corn. The food was ok, but we hope still to find better bbq in the future :) also even with the smallest portion sizes we could not finish everything.