Royal Gorge, Great Sand Dunes, and Pagosa Springs

The weekend after Sarah's visit Justin was ready to explore all of Colorado at once.  This is the problem, there was so much he wanted to see, and with our time in the Springs already ticking away, we were almost paralyzed with indecision.  So that weekend we ended up taking a drive out to Great Sand Dunes National Park.  I think we were both a little disappointed in ourselves for choosing this, since we've already been there once, but it was beautiful, one of our favorite places, and the route we had planned was completely different since last time we were driving up from New Mexico.  So with that we struck out on our little trip, and made our first stop at the Royal Gorge Bridge Park.  This is apparently the highest suspension bridge in North America.

My people on the bridge.  You can rent golf carts to drive across to a little amusement park type place on the other side, hence the speed limit sign. 

The highest suspension bridge in North America...why does she do this to me?

I need to get her some BYU gear so that she can represent who she really is a little bit better.

Those little red dots are the tram that you can ride back across the gorge, but I don't do things like that, because I will freak out and embarrass myself if I do, so we walked back across.

You can also pay to zipline back across.

We found the Idaho flag on the way back, and we were all starting to look hot and over it.

So the bridge was totally overpriced.  I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone.  I guess people go there to make a day of it with the rides on the other side, but even that didn't sound fun.  It was just too hot and too expensive for that.  Furthermore this bridge bounces and sways a LOT.  I don't like heights, I like them even less when I can see a river waaaaay down below me through the wooden slats of the bridge as I bounce along to the other side.  In fact, this swaying and bouncing was significant enough that by the time we got to the end and turned around to come back again Justin and I were both starting to feel a little sick, and I don't think that Vivian was really doing all that great either.  This wasn't maybe the funnest thing we've ever done, but now we know.

After that we continued on through a canyon road that ran beside a river, and it was absolutely beautiful, and took forever to get through.  Getting to the park took hours longer than we had anticipated, so we arrived at Great Sand Dunes in the late afternoon/early evening.  There were lots of hikes we wanted to do, but the pregnancy ruled out some of them, time constraints ruled out more of them, and Vivian's desire to be out of the car, and not in a hiking backpack ruled out the rest.  So we settled for playing around in the sand, and watching Vivian "swim" in Medano Creek.

Playing in the sand

Running through the creek

This is still one of our favorite places, and one National Park that we would visit over and over again.

The day was a success.  The park is just as beautiful as we remembered it.  Vivian loved the sand, loved the mud, loved the creek, and was completely exhausted by the time we finally loaded back up and started the drive home.  We went home a different route than how we had come, and were home in about half the time it had taken us to get there.  

For the next weekend we had happened across a few days that opened up in the timeshare in Pagosa Springs, and we had booked it immediately.  We had been keeping our eye on that timeshare for a while and determined that it was so booked up all summer that there was just no way that we would ever be so fortunate as to find an opening, but there it was, and off we went to Pagosa Springs.  We left Friday as soon as Justin got off work.  I feel like I should repeat myself, we left as soon as Justin got off work.  We actually pulled that off for once.  We drove in through Wolf Creek pass, the drive was incredibly scenic, and we found that Pagosa Springs is as well.  It's famous for it's hot springs, but here again hot springs/pregnancy...it's not a good combination.  There were lots of other interesting things to do in the area, but we double rented all summer to hold our place in Logan, and it's not like he was raking in the dough at the internship, so a lot of it fell outside our price range (I'm primarily referring to a railroad trip that we would like to take some day when we have more monies).  We settled on hiking, and there were some very promising trails in the area.  We selected one that was supposed to be about 7 miles roundtrip to a waterfall.

The view from our balcony at the timeshare.

Vivian just needs dirt and rocks to be happy. 

Hiking pregnant...it's not very pretty.

Playing around at the bottom of the falls.

View from the hike back to the car

For some reason it didn't occur to us until we were pretty much stumbling back to the car, that maybe 7 miles at 8,000 feet was a bit much for the first outing in a while.  We made it, but I was completely exhausted by the time we got back, and it was Justin's misfortune to have a very crabby wife on his hands by the end of things.  We retreated back to the timeshare for a nap, and the world seemed a bit more cheery in it's aftermath.  We didn't do much of anything that evening, just spent some time relaxing, and enjoying real furniture, which our apartment in Colorado Springs was sadly lacking.

The next morning we got up, packed up our things, checked out and planned our route home via the "Million Dollar Highway."  We had read that it's a little scary, steep drop-offs, no guard rails, but proclaimed by some to be the most scenic drive in all of Colorado.  So Justin put me in the driver's seat so that he didn't have to listen to me panicking at him about driving too fast, not focusing on the road, and getting too close to the edge, and off we went.  It was beautiful, really beautiful, but we have definitely been on scarier, and just as pretty in Colorado too.  That's not to say it was a disappointment at all, because it wasn't, but to be fair, Colorado is laced with roads that wind through beautiful mountain passes, so it's hard to say that this is the most spectacular.  

That route home was definitely not the fastest and we rolled back into Colorado Springs late that night, but thrilled with how the weekend had gone, and feeling even more sad that our time in Colorado seemed to be slipping away faster than we had hoped.