Possibly The Last Colorado Entry: Sand Dunes and Such

The Sand Dunes National Park and Monument is pretty awesome. The dunes are the largest in the United States. It was like stepping out of Colorado into the middle east. Except it was freezing. We hiked up and down a couple of dunes before running and rolling down them. My camera broke in my pocket as I rolled down the dune. It is still full of sand. My dad gave me his camera. What a wonderful guy!
Hiking through all of that sand was hard work. High elevation, tall dunes, sand resistance and wind make for quite a hike!

Dad is contemplating his run down the dune.

My dad is running down the dune in this one. This is one of the only pictures that shows the magnitude of the dune we ran/rolled down.

Clay ran halfway down the dune and then rolled the rest of the way down.

As I rolled down the hill, I expected to stop at some point, but I kept going and going and going. I was very dizzy.

Well, the UFO watchtower was one of the more entertaining venues we visited. Apparently the area just west of Mt. Blanca is pretty heavily populated with UFOs so some people got together and built a watchtower. This is just a random turn off out in the middle of no where, so of course we had to take a look. One sign let us know that they were not responsible for any abductions. Another sign invited us to leave a piece of our essence on one of the aliens in the alien garden. The last picture in this series features the 'essence alien' and if you squint, you can make out the battery we left in his scarf. We weren't prepared with anything... it was all we had.

I always knew there was something different about him...

This is the essence alien before we added our essence.

Clay sees something!!! He actually saw a plane fly overhead exactly as he pointed. Well... he thought it was a plane.

Holy Cow! I wish I had seen an alien!

I never thought that I would describe my essence as being like a battery! This was taken from on top of the watchtower looking down.

Before we went all the way up to the sand dunes, we stopped to hike up to Zapata Falls. This waterfall is about 20 or more feet tall and is frozen. We walked up a trail to get to the creek that comes from the falls. You walk on the creek as you can see and hear the water rushing below the ice. The falls are amazing. It was crazy to be looking at a frozen waterfall, but as you look close, you can see the water fall behind the ice. There was actually a group of people with all their ice climbing gear preparing to climb the falls.