Colorado (Part 3 of 3)

10/1/26 - We drove about 3 hours south to reach Alamosa, CO, near Great Sand Dunes National Park.

We had a great view of the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains out the back of our RV

We had some time after we set up so we did a short hike at Zapata Falls.

Although sunny when we left the RV, it was drizzling when we arrived at our hike. This produced a rainbow to welcome us!

The falls were tucked behind the rocks and inaccessible (Pat tried!) but the raging stream was lovely to see and listen to.

We did a short hike up another trail and got a great view of the sand dunes

On the way back to town, we had some excellent sunset views

We went into town for Mexican (there were at least 6 Mexican places in Alamosa!). Lindo Jalisco had AWESOME margaritas!

When we got back to the RV, the skies were so dark we were able to see the Milky Way

10/2/26 - In-between phases at the laundromat, I drove out to the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, hoping to see some migrating Sandhill Cranes. I saw several Canadian Geese and finally saw a handful of Sandhill Cranes on my way back to town:

In the afternoon, Pat and I ran at the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge (which was ~0.5 miles from our RV park). We saw a coyote, a snake sunning hissssself (actually we saw 3 but I wanted to tell my joke), a rabbit, and a hawk. We also had a bird drop its kill when we ran by. We didn't see the type of bird but when it flew away, I heard the kill fall down and then saw a small rodent lying on the ground below the tree. There was also a prairie dog town near where we parked:

10/3/26 - We visited Great Sand Dunes National Park. Similar to White Sands NP (that we saw in New Mexico near the start of our trip), the sand comes from AND gets stopped by mountains.

The dunes here are the highest in North America. The arrow is pointing to people that have climbed to the top of a dune (not even the highest one)

We had rented sand sleds from our RV park

And sledded down some of the dunes! The loose sand made it difficult to climb up so we didn't sled for very long

Plus, we wanted to save our energy for a hike we were both anxious to do. We hiked from 9,000' to 11,000' with the goal of reaching the alpine lake that feeds Zapata Falls. Like Mount Everest climbers, we had to turn around before reaching our goal (we were ~2 miles short) because we needed to get back down before sunset. We weren't too upset; the entire hike was gorgeous and our legs thanked us because they were still wobbly on the trip back down.

Notice the valley floor ~3000 ft below us in the background

We had to cross the stream 3x each way. This was the scariest crossing. The water was COLD!

The aspens changing color looked like fire!

On 10/5/26, we will drive to our last destination (before home). Our return trip lined up perfectly to catch a couple days of the Albuquerque Balloon Festival!