It took about three months, but Abby finally worked one of her baby teeth out of her head. She was very excited. She just about flipped when the Tooth Fairy brought five $1 bills and six quarters. “I didn’t know she would bring me all of these coins,” she said.
We’ve replaced Ol’ Leaky with a new pop-up camper. Abby christened it Daisy. Daisy has a number of improvements over OL, namely she doesn’t leak. And she has an air conditioner, a refrigerator and she doesn’t have that odd smell that OL had. Because Abby named the thing Daisy we thought it would be clever to take her to Daisy State Park on Lake Greeson for her maiden voyage. The temperature was approaching Hell levels so we knew it would be a stern test for the air conditioner. I didn’t have high hopes, but I was pleasantly surprised. The camper stayed quite cool, probably in the high 70’s while it was 100 outside. I even had to turn it down during the night.
Back when I got into the digital photography I did some drop photos using milk. I always meant to try it again, so now that I have a real macro lens I looked up how to do it on the Internets and I did it. It’s a tedious project. It’s out of my system now and I can move on.
My diploma came in the mail while we were touring the West. Anybody got a job opening?
After six days touring the great American West, it was off for Arkansas the grueling heat and humidity. We went back across Kansas so we could stop for the night at Mom and Dad’s farm in far eastern Kansas. We stopped just outside of Dodge City to get a look at the Arkansas River, or what used to be the Arkansas River. By the time the river leaves Colorado and enters Kansas it’s bone dry, as you can see in the photo. Compare it to the photos in this previous post. All the water is sucked out for irrigation purposes. I find it fascinating that we can allow one of the great American rivers to exist in this condition. The river runs about a half-mile from our house in Little Rock where it’s nearly a half-mile wide.
After a night in Pueblo we headed up to the golden hills of Cripple Creek. Cripple Creek is a classic former gold camp that experienced a huge boom in the late 19th century followed by a huge bust. Gina and I visited there in 2005 and took the tour of the Mollie Kathleen mine. For some reason we thought Abby would enjoy being 1,000 feet underground. To get into the mine, they stack you nine deep into this tiny miners cage. We got the privilege of touring with a Boy Scout troop. No evidence of farting was apparent on the elevator, but later during the tour, it seemed that one of the Scouts needed to get back to the surface before something awful happened.
It turned out that Abby did enjoy being 1,000 feet underground. It’s really an interesting tour. I recommend it. Cripple Creek also boasts a fantastic tour of a former brothel, which we went on the last time, it’s pretty graphic and we didn’t feel it would be appropriate for Abby. I also recommend it.
The Mollie Kathleen has a bunch of old equipment and vehicles sitting around on the property. I didn’t have much time to check them and the light was bad for photography, so I only shot this old truck. I gave it the HDR treatment because the light was so contrasty.
We took the short ride on the Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad. It’s pretty cool because the engine is powered by coal-fired steam. we sat up in the very front so we could watch the engineer do his work. He had to shovel coal, operate the engine controls and be a tour guide all at the same time.
The railroad operates two trains. The other one was painted to look just like Thomas the Tank Engine. Abby got a huge kick out of that.
We then drove a couple of miles to Cripple Creek’s sister town, Victor. In between, there’s a giant open pit gold mine that still produces millions in gold. Victor is little less tourist oriented (there are no casinos) and there’s a lot of historic structures just sitting out waiting to be explored. I found this collection of nails, all of which apparently failed at their job, on one of the abandoned head frames that dot the countryside.
Down on the main drag the museum was holding a gold panning fund-raiser. For $5 you got to pan in the wooden trough all you wanted. The museum owners said they bought some gold from a company and mixed it with sand and dumped it in the trough. They also added a bunch of colorful rocks and iron pyrite so that the kids wouldn’t go away empty handed. Abby seemed quite pleased with the “treasures” she got. Gina and I are big fan of the TV show Gold Fever, so we’ve seen a bunch of footage of Tom Massey panning gold. The museum’s co-owner, who also works for the giant open-pit gold mine, watched us and remarked, “You folks look like you know what you’re doing.” Damn right.
Victor offered some excellent late-afternoon-wall-porn shooting.
We left the sand dunes and headed out for Royal Gorge located on the other side of the Sangre de Cristos. We went over Poncha Pass out of the Rio Grande drainage and into the Arkansas River drainage. The highway runs right next to the river for miles, and we stopped a couple of times to watch rafters running the whitewater.
We had decided that this day would be an Abby day and we knew she’d like Royal Gorge because it’s basically a permanent county fair complete with carousel, petting zoo and funnel cakes. This would make the third trip to RG for Gina and me. We stopped there on our honeymoon in 1994 on the way out to Arches National Park and again in 1999 during a tour of the West. RG has changed quite a bit since our first visit. The main reason to visit used to be the bridge, which was once the highest bridge in the U.S. Now the bridge is just a means to get from the merry-go-round on the east side of the bridge to the fake Old West town on the west side. The bridge is supposedly the tallest in North America and was once the tallest in the world. Although some dispute over the actual height has arisen in recent years. An exhibit of elk and buffalo along with one of those giant three-man swings were new attractions since our last visit. The swing zooms out over the gorge for what must be a true pant-soiling thrill. We didn’t try it. The whole thing is crass and ridiculous and the perfect example of everything that is wrong with America and Americans.
Abby did the burro ride twice, riding a different burro each time. They were named Strawberry and Blueberry. The rules were that two grownups had to accompany the child on the burro, one to lead the animal and one to hold onto the kid to prevent a fall. I was leading Strawberry when I stopped to take a picture and the girl in charge started screaming at me to never let go of the lead rope. In mortal fear of shattering what sounded like the #1 rule of the burro ride, I grabbed the rope and wasn’t able to get a photo of Abby and the burro’s head in the same picture.
This trip to RG might have been the greatest experience of Abby’s life. She’s not big on showing joy. She doesn’t smile much normally, but she smiled nearly the entire time at the gorge.
We panned for gold and Abby tried to convince me of the utter folly of looking for gold in a wooden trough whose contents are controlled by the owners of an amusement park.
Then we rode the scary tram/elevator thing to the bottom of the gorge. While we were down there, Gina re-enacted a photo pose from our honeymoon trip.
A wag, while looking at our freshly developed honeymoon photos way back then, remarked that Gina looked as if she had been suddenly struck blind.
The park also boasts the highest tram in the world. We didn’t ride that thing either.
An older Asian gentleman with a loose grasp of English and I swapped cameras in front of the water-driven clock/calendar. I shot a photo of him and his family and he shot a photo of me and mine.
RG is also home to the most craptastic tourist-crap emporium that I’ve ever had the privilege to visit. Its crowning glory is this huge wall dedicated to displaying the crappiest possible useless crap to be found on the earth. This hideous collection of lame scenes laquered onto tree slices (which quite possibly are actually plastic) doesn’t even contain one example with the words Royal Gorge crappily painted or printed on it. I want to meet the person who hangs one of these on their wall and proudly boasts that they got it at Royal Gorge so I can see with my own eyes why we’re all doomed.
When we got up on our third day in Taos, we could see new snow on the mountain tops and decided to go back up to Taos Ski Village to check it out.
After an hour in the ski village, admiring the various view of snow capped mounatins, we took off for Colorado.
On the outskirts of San Luis, Colo., we stopped at a historical marker to take in the view of the fresh snow on the Culebra Range of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The marker said the irrigation ditch in the foreground is the San Luis People’s Ditch, dug in the 1850’s by the community and the oldest operating irrigation apparatus in the state. After San Luis we stopped off in Fort Garland to eat some of the worst road food I’ve ever had at the Cowboy Cafe. Then we visited the town’s grocery store, inside of which it remains 1975. Pretty charming actually.
Our next stop was Great Sand Dunes National Park where we had reservations at the Great Sand Dunes Lodge. Gina and I visited the sand dunes back in 1998, but only stayed there for an hour or so and barely made it past the parking lot. I’ve always wanted to go back and hike out into the dunes. We trudged about a quarter of a mile across a sandy flat to reach the first dune. When we got there Abby threw herself on the ground and started rolling in the sand.
At one point we lost her as she went rolling down the side of a dune. The wind was gusty and strong at times. The strong gusts lifted a layer of sand about a foot thick up off the ground. I guess the sand was too heavy to go any higher, need a stronger wind for that. Abby, in an amazed voice, said, “Look at the sand! It’s glowing!” The sun was shining down through the layer of blown sand and from a low angle it did indeed look like the sand surface was glowing.
The sand dunes are major geological wonder. Erosion carries sand out of the mountains and onto the vast Rio Grande Valley. The southerly winds pick that sand back up and carry it toward the Sangre de Cristos. But wind blowing downslope out of the mountains stops the southerlies and the sand drops out. Over the eons a huge dune field has formed. And although the dune field is huge, it doesn’t extend all along the mountains. Conditions are only right in one area of the valley for dune formation.
Here’s a shot of some people for perspective. Some of the individual dunes are immense. The tallest dune is 750 feet.
The lodge is situated just outside the park. Each room has a back patio with this view. I think that tallest mountain is the 14,294 foot Crestone Peak.
I took Abby and Gina to the lodge and went back out on the dunes to shoot some photos in the magic hour light.
The wind became constant and stronger as the afternoon wore on. That foot-thick layer of airborne sand was everywhere. The ground in most of my photos looks a little blurry because of the blowing sand. I liked this one because my shadow was extended beyond the rim of this dune because it was falling on the sand being blown past the edge. At one point I laid my tripod down and the wind created a tripod shaped sand drift. Also, sand stuck to every slightly lubricated part of the tripod. It’s still gritty.
Medano Creek runs along the edge of the dunes and is a big draw for dune tourists. The creek normally runs well into June, but this year the mountains had a smaller than usual snowpack and the creek was going dry by mid-June. You can actually go to the place where the creek ends and watch it soak into the sand.
While I was messing around shooting the end of the creek I turned around and saw this awesome sunset spectacle over Blanca Peak, the tallest mountain in the Sangre de Cristos at 14,345 feet.
For day 2 in Taos we headed into the mountains to see Taos Ski Valley and do a short hike. A little snow remained at the highest elevations and the snow melt creeks were running pretty well. We found this waterfall right below the idle ski lift.
The mountains are criss-crossed by miles of hiking trails, all of which had serious elevation gains. We chose the trail to Williams Lake. The trailhead was at around 10,000 feet and the lake is above 11,000, so we didn’t expect to be able to do the entire 4-mile round trip. But we made it about halfway before turning back. The trail followed a beautiful snow melt creek and the whole area was covered with Douglas fir Christmas trees.
We stopped at one point for a snack. We dug out some chips and cookies and a gang of four or five birds descended upon us looking for their share of the food. They got so close that it was unnerving at first. They would come close enough to eat cookie pieces off our shoes, but they couldn’t quite commit to eating out of our hands.
For some reason they pipe the melt water from somewhere up above into the trail-side creek.
More snow melt.
We headed back to Taos so Abby could visit a toy store she found the day before in this alley off the town square. Unfortunately, the store was already closed, so we headed up to the other end of the alley to eat at one of the town’s highly touted restaurants. As we started off, Abby squealed and I looked down to see a big splash of blood hit her leg. She’s prone to nosebleeds and the super dry air had taken its toll on her nasal passages. She immediately clamped her nose shut with her fingers just like the doctor showed her to do. The nosebleed was minor and she got it under control quickly, but she didn’t want to go inside any restaurant for fear the bleeding would start again in front of a bunch of strangers. We decided to just drive through Wendy’s and head out to the Rio Grande gorge to watch the sunset.
The gorge slices through the bottom of a flat valley. You can’t see it until you get right to it. The main attraction is the Gorge Bridge that passes 650 feet above the river, the nation’s fifth highest bridge. It’s such a big tourist attraction that people set up tables in the parking area to sell all manner of tourist geegaws and other items. One guy was selling tools, wrenches, socket sets, screwdrivers. I guess he wasn’t afraid of competing with Wal-Mart. It’s also apparently a big draw for the suicidal. We walked out to the middle of the bridge and looked around. I found it hard to get a decent photo of either the bridge or the gorge. Tall fences and big warning signsare meant to prevent the adventurous from leaving the highway right-of-way so I couldn’t really get to place for a good angle for a photo.