Back Into the Sandbox

Wednesday, May 4th – Questo, NM to Great Sand Dunes to Colorado Springs, Colorado – Day 83 

We woke up, ate some oatmeal and headed into Questo to visit Northstar Tire & Auto. To thank Dave, we left a few pages coloured by the kids, a thank you note and a bottle of wine. 

At the tire shop JR helped us out. He had one identical tire to ours. He brought us in and an hour later, we were back on the road. He even advised us to check out the neighbourhood church as it was just renovated using only local labour. It was a beautiful, little church with stained glass in the windows and wooden beams on the ceiling. 

 Gen took over the driving while I tried to catch up on blogging. We were headed to Colorado Springs but the forecast there was rain, so we decided to take an hour detour and see the Great Sands National Park. We had already seen the White Sands National Park so we weren’t sure we needed to see more sand dunes, but we decided to take advantage of the opportunity. 

The dunes were stunning. They were nestled up against the mountains and they were massive. We went to the visitor centre and received our junior and senior ranger packages. While checking out the exhibits and doing our activities, it started snowing outside. We received our badges and special patches. 

We wanted to do a hike on the dunes, so we drove to the main parking lot. We had some circumstances working against us: it was cold, the kids were hungry, the wind was bothering Gen’s ears, and there was a stream of snow melt water between us and the dunes. We voted three to two in favour of walking to the dunes; Aisling, Charlotte, Dad vs John and Mom. 

 We tried to find a way to cross the shallow river. After searching for a while, I took my shoes off and carried the kids across. Gen was tenacious. She found her way across, and I think she only dampened her new hiking boots. The dunes were still far away, and the sand was soft making it tough to walk. We got to the first dune we could find, still two hundred metres from the main dunes, took some pictures and then started back. I carried the kids across the stream again with numb feet but soon got into a warm car. 

 We had to take a winding road up and across the mountains to get to the east side of Colorado. We briefly stopped so the kids could run around a play structure. Gen had found a free camping spot at a trailhead of a bunch of ATV trails. We wanted to get there before dark, but we were running out of daylight. We needed groceries and the kids were hungry, so we stopped at the Country Kitchen for dinner before we hit up a Walmart. 

The road into our campsite was a washboard and we had a bumpy ride in, but the site was nice. It had a vault toilet, fire circle, and a great view of the mountains to our west. There were a fair number of people bringing in ATV’s, some other RV’s camping there but all far enough away it didn’t disturb us.