Bonus Day- 9/17/06

So we had dinner with KG & Sarah last night. It was so nice to get out and socialize. (insert picture) It always amazes me that we haven’t seen them in about 2 years but after we hung out for a couple of hours it seems like we just spoke yesterday. Being Colorado locals, they suggested that we hit up Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs and the Great Sand Dunes near Alamosa. So we changed up our route to Mesa Verde and added those attractions in the plan. Go to find out, the Great Sand Dunes got upgraded to National Park status back in 2004! That makes 21 national parks planned for on this trip!

The Garden of the Gods is these crazy rock formations out of nowhere. They are old sand dunes that got compressed over time and turned into rock. What is really strange about them is that they are now oriented 90 degrees from how they formed. As time passed, the weaker sand/rock got washed away and left these few rock masses. The park also allowed dogs to walk the trails so Rosie finally got some exercise. She’s been leased up for a while now…the campgrounds out here have warned us that dogs are getting killed by coyotes and not to leave them unleased or unattended. We’re having a hard time seeing how a coyote (unless in a pack) can kill a big dog like Rosie, but we didn’t want to take the chance.

The Great Sand Dunes were awesome. We actually stayed right in the park and had a back door view of the sunset over the sand dunes. We spent the morning hiking up to the second tallest dune in the park. It was really tough work…felt like you only made progress for every other step. Rosie got to come hiking for the second day in a row and she had a blast. She treated the sand like she does with snow…sticking her full nose in the sand, she had Keith and me in stitches as her black nose was covered with tan sand.

Well off to Mesa Verde. Hope everyone is relaxing and enjoying the start of fall.