From there, we headed back to Colorado on our way to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Driving through southern Colorado was very cool. It's a lot different than northern Colorado, where I live. It's very dry and desert like with a lot of red rocks and dirt.
Just before the sand dunes is Zapata Falls, a 30 foot waterfall recessed in a crevice.
We were there early in the season, so half of the waterfall was still frozen.
Great Sand Dunes Nation Park was very cool. The dunes are huge! We aired down the tires on the Jeep and drove through the sand in the National Park. Driving through dry, fine, loose sand is a challenge! We stopped halfway through the park to climb around on the dunes a little.
It's really hard to climb up a sand dune because for each step you take upward, you slide about half way back down in the sand. The scenery from the top of the dune was pretty amazing. We were standing on top of a giant sand dune with the plains between the front range and the Continental Divide to the west and the densely wooded front range to the east.
After driving through the sand in the National Park, we took a moderate 4 wheel drive road through the national preserve. It was a fun trail to drive with several creek crossings and spectacular views.
One section of the trail went through a portion of the forest that had been burned in a forest fire last fall. It was surreal how much damage had occurred and how little had grown back.
The rest of the pictures from Great Sand Dunes are on flickr.
On the last day of our trip, we stopped a few touristy places we'd heard about. The first was Bishop Castle. This is a castle that one man (Jim Bishop) started building in 1969. It's still not finished because Jim is the sole builder and does it only in his free time (he has a full time job). He lets the public climb around on it for free and it is pretty impressive. You can climb all the way to the top of the tower you can see in the picture.
The rest of the pictures of the castle are on flickr and are definitely worth checking out.
We also stopped at the Royal Gorge Bridge, the world's highest suspension bridge. The bridge was impressive, but kind of a disappointment because they've built a theme park around it. It's a huge tourist attraction now and you can't get cross the bridge or even get close to it without paying 25 bucks to get into the theme park.
From there, we headed back to Silver Plume.
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