Day 5 - Alamosa CO, total miles: 1881

Hello All!

I am writing from a small town in south western Colorado called Alamosa. We just spent about 3 days in Great Sand Dunes National Park and are on our way to Rio Grande National Forest to do some hiking and backpacking.

Here are some highlights from the trip so far:

Ridiculous lightning storm: We decided to drive straight from Cincinnati to Colorado. While driving through the night in Kansas we were entertained by the most intense lightning storm either of us had ever seen. One strike was just a few hundred yards in front of the car!

Getting lost: in Colorado Springs...pretty city, confusing roads (at least it managed to confuse the GPS)

Hiking in Great Sand Dunes national park: The scenery there was so bizarre it hardly seemed real. We got a campsite by the skin of our teeth that overlooked 13,000 foot and higher mountains on one side and 750 foot high sand dunes on the other side. We did some hiking in the mountains the first day but had to call it quits after a couple miles because we hadn't adjusted to the altitude (between 8,000 and 9,000 feet). The next day we hiked to the top of high dune. The dune is about 650 feet higher than the parking lot and about a mile hike through smaller (just barely) dunes. The wind was about 25 mph, which made for interesting travel through the sand. It took about an hour to reach the top, and we got fantastic views of the mountains and 30 sq. miles of sand dunes.




That's all we've got for now!

Carrie and Chris