Going East - Crossing of the Rocky Mountains to Denver (15.-18.3.09)

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We left Durango after three nice days and went further east to reach our final destination Denver. The distances are still pretty big in Colorado and we did not fancy a 7 hour drive. We looked at the map and found a National Park called Sand Dunes. It was only 3-4 hours and a slight detour.
We passed on the way the Rio Grande and crossed the water shed from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Sand Dunes National Park turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It has the tallest dunes of North America and nice views of sand ridges in front of snow covered mountains. The dunes are formed by a combination of east -west winds and a river between the dunes and the mountain range. The sand is blown by an east wind on the dunes, removed by the river down south to the valley floor and blown west by another wind. Then the east wind picks up the sand again. This system is fragile, but results in extremely tall dunes of 230 m height.

The drive from Sand Dunes took four hours through several rolling mountain ridges. We knew the city of Denver only from an old once very popular TV series called Denver Clan. Otherwise the “Mile high City” - so the official slogan meant little to us. Downtown had a very long nice pedestrian zone with a new art district at it ends. We visited the curious “Blue Bear” who tried to figure out what happened at the Convention Center and enjoyed the “Singing Sinks” in the Denver Art Museum. Later ones were discovered by the urgent needs of Yuki of a restroom rather than intended (see video). Our arrival at Denver happened to be at St. Patrick’s Day and the streets were filled with people dressed in the green colors of the Irish. A quick check of the internet revealed a large scene of Irish bars indicating a huge Irish heritage of the city. We found one pub with an attached tent and enjoyed the evening with traditional Irish music and a performance of Irish tap dancing as the highlight of the evening. The Guinness stout was supplemented by some French Fries at a Mc Donald’s drive in before we got late night back to the motel.

The next morning we squeezed all our outdoor and camping gear as best as possible into our two bag packs and drove to the airport. The rental car guys at the return were quite impressed and asked me if I know how many miles I had driven. It turned out to be 3100 miles in 23 days; a little more than 130 miles a day.

Practicalities:
Sand Dunes National Park 3 US$ per person
Camping Sand Dunes 14 US$ per site
Denver accommodation check roomsaver.com for motel deals

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