RoadTrip: New Places, New States, New Mexico

I was lucky enough as a child to do a lot of driving vacations to far away lands so I have been to many of the 50 states (I still need to do some East Coast and New England states).  But today I was going to check off New Mexico because we were driving south from Colorado Springs.  Well actually we decided to drive west and then south because the drive straight south seemed boring to just be on Interest 25 the entire time.

Sawatch Mountains

We left Colorado Springs pretty early and started our drive west on Colorado 24.  This was a surprisingly pretty drive with lots of scenery as we approached the Sawatch Mountain range and South Park Basin.   We finally turned south and we were on the road to the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  I came across a picture of the Great Sand Dunes when I had done some preliminary research and was amazed by the look of this place.  Huge sand dunes surrounded by towering mountains.  We weren’t going to miss this place and we were planning on playing around in the sand for a bit when we arrived.

First Views of the Great Sand Dunes

 

Before we could make it to the Great Sand Dunes, Megan’s Road Side America app wanted us to check out the alligator park, advertised as Colorado’s only Gator Park.  We pulled off to check it out and when we saw the entrance fee $15 per person we quickly jumped back in the car, I wouldn’t even let Megan go to the bathroom.  We made it to the Great Sand Dunes a few minutes later and stood in awe of these massive sand dunes.  This was also the first National Park on our trip and we purchased our year long pass for all national parks, preserves, and forests.  The pass cost us $80 but with each entrance fee between $5 and $25 for the big ones like Grand Canyon we quickly got our money's worth.

We changed shoes into our keens thinking that we could hike around better, we were wrong.  The scorching hot sand filled up our keens quickly and made it difficult to walk.  Plus walking up a sand hill is difficult enough without burning your feet.  Unfortunately for Megan, I was not going to be deterred.  I wanted to climb to the top so we trudged through the sand two steps up, slide 1.5 steps back.  But we made it to a point that I was happy to call the summit.  After taking 45 minutes or so to reach the peak I believe it took us all of about 7 minutes to make it back down.  We would run and jump and fly off the edge.  We would run straight down and it felt like we were little kids and our legs couldn't turn over fast enough.  Some other visitors at the park had thought to bring sleds and were even sledding down the hills.

The little black dots are people.

We finally reached the creek that runs along the base of the dunes and quickly dunked our feet to cool them off.  The creek felt amazing and had a really cool feature that it doesn't have set banks because it is all sand the creek continually is changing its course.  We got back to the parking lot and found some cold water fountains to refill our water bottles which we drained while hiking and we were also able to get a quick wash to clean off our feet, which would have bothered me for the rest of the day had we not been able to do that.

Lunch Spot at Zapata Falls with Great Sand Dunes National Park in the Background

We had seen a sign for Zapata Falls just a few miles down the road and we were thinking head there to eat lunch away from some of the crowd at Great Sand Dunes National Park.  We turned off the state road at the Zapata Falls sign and realized that although it was only 7 miles from the national park, 6 of it was on a gravel road.  But we were committed and hungry so we drove on.  Not only was it gravel but it was steep, bumpy, and included many sharps turns, but we made it to the parking area and we were pleasantly surprised with the views we had looking back over the Great Sand Dunes.

Zapata Falls - Most Would Have Turned Back Here

We enjoyed some food from the cooler, especially the port wine cheese and crackers.  We walked the short walk up to the falls and were slightly disappointed with the lack of a waterfall near the trail.  There was a large creek and a lot of rocks but definitely not a fall.  We noticed that just up stream a bit the creek turned and disappeared into some rock cliffs.  We thought that maybe it was worth it to jump from rock to rock up stream to get a better look.  Megan had smartly put her hiking boots back on but I was lazy and since the hike was barely going to be a mile I was wearing my slip on shoes with essentially zero grip.  These shoes were not going to help me at all so I took them off and decided to brave the frigid water barefooted as Megan stayed dry hoping from rock to rock.

We reached the rock cliffs and realized from the noise that there was a water fall you just couldn't see it from the trail.  Even as my feet were starting to reach frost bite levels, we went a bit further into the thin dark crevice and finally spotted the waterfall.  What an incredible sight we got to see, Zapata Falls was still partially frozen, which would explain the icy water but it wouldn't help explain why I choose to walk through the icy water with no shoes.  Cold feet be damned, Zapata Falls was awesome and we felt like we saw something that many others wouldn't have climbed all the way to and with the timing of the year something that was very unique.

Zapata Falls - Partially Frozen

The Approach to Zapata Falls - Thin, Dark, Icy Cold Water

After making it back to dry land and dry shoes, we skipped back to the car excited with our little adventure and ready to take on the next one, New Mexico!  We were in the southern part of Colorado so it wasn't long before we came up to the "Welcome to New Mexico"sign which we both were happy to jump out of the car and get a few pictures.  We also decided that we should have been taking pictures of states signs the entire time so we started the new tradition of trying to get "Welcome to ..." signs as we drove by.  

Trying to Capture "Welcome to...."

Quick side story: Megan tends to drive faster than I do. I may not have learned to slow down after the first three speeding tickets but the fourth one seemed to get through to me.  As you can imagine trying to get a picture of the "Welcome to Utah" sign is quite difficult while traveling the speed of sound but I was able to figure it out with some practice on unimportant signs like "Speed Limit 70."  However, when I would be driving and Megan trying to take the picture I would have to slow down to snail like speeds and we would still end up with pictures like the one on the right.  This made for a great laugh each time she would look at the picture after taking it and curse that I was driving too fast.

Back to New Mexico, we were headed towards Santa Fe for the night and had no plans until I remembered that I had emailed a former coworker who had spent a few years living in Santa Fe  about what to do in the area.  He had mentioned the town of Taos and since it was was only a few miles out of the way we decided to detour over to check it out.  We also quickly brought up a hotel on Expedia in Santa Fe that included breakfast for only $56.  

The drive to Taos was beautiful and it wasn't until we arrived at the Rio Grande Gorge that I remembered my colleague said Taos had a beautiful gorge.  We were hungry and tried after a long day so we didn't stop in town except to see the gorge before continuing on towards Santa Fe.

Rio Grande Gorge - Taos, NM

Rio Grande Gorge - Taos, NM

We made it to our hotel and refilled the cooler with some hotel ice another reason this hotel was a super good deal.  We showered and put on some nice clothes because we were going to head to The Shed for dinner which received great reviews and was recommended as one of the top New Mexican restaurants in town.  As we pulled into the quaint downtown area we realized that a bunch of the streets were closed for some reason.  After finding a parking spot a few blocks from The Shed, which doesn’t sound far but downtown Santa Fe isn’t more than a few blocks square, so it felt longer having to walk from one side to the other.  As we walked through the center of town we found out the reason for the road closings, the Gumball 3000 road race was stopping in town that evening.

Neither of us had any idea what the Gumball 3000 Race was all about, and after asking a shop owner who also had no clue we resorted to our phones.   The webpage said it was a race from New York to Los Angeles and the route changes every year.  The drivers sleep at night like they would be doing in Santa Fe this evening.  We deduced that each car has multiple drivers to switch between incase of fatigue or speeding tickets.  There were only a few cars in town so we kept walking to the restaurant.

Seriously Spicy Food from The Shed

We made it to The Shed and had to wait a few minutes for a table, which we were more than fine with as we pulled up to the bar and ordered some homemade margaritas.  We didn’t have to wait long before we were called to our table and quickly ordered some guacamole to chow on as we decided on our entrees.  The guac was spicy but we cooled our mouths down with are cold drinks.  We should have used this as an omen for our meals but we didn’t think that way.

Megan went with a burrito and I had a green and a red chili enchilada.  The burrito was huge and delicious. My enchiladas were incredibly spicy and I quickly ordered some sour cream and another beer to cool my tongue.  I thought I was ready for authentic New Mexican food…next time I’ll know better.

Lamborghini in the GumBall 3000 Race

After dinner as we walked back through town more cars had arrived and the cars were incredibly expensive and drivers all seemed to be really really ridiculously rich.  We saw Aston Martins, Lamborghinis, Rolls Royces, etc.  The drivers and passengers were all handing our little stickers and tokens presumably to get you to cheer for their team or their sponsors.  We weren’t that interested in either and were fatigued from the sand dunes, waterfall and long day in the car so we headed back to our hotel to catch some much needed sleep.