Great Sand Dunes to Lake of the Ozarks.

Leaving Santa Fe, we traveled north heading for Great Sand Dunes national park.  The dunes are the tallest dunes in North America and are caused by the geography and climate.
The drive is very picturesque and you end up in the San Luis valley, a high altitude (7000+ feet) valley between several mountain ranges.  The valley has lot of agriculture (potatoes). The Rio Grande river also starts in the mountains that form the western side of the valley.  It is interesting that this area was settled long before the Spanish came through California or Europeans from the East.  The settlers came from Mexico and Central America. They also settled Santa Fe on their way to the San Luis valley. 
The dunes are created due to sand being created by rains on the western mountains and the winds blowing it to the other side of the valley where it collects against the mountains on the eastern side of the valley. In addition, it is snow melt streams that keep returning the sand back to valley floor.
It is an amazing sight to drive along the valley floor and then see large sand dunes pop up.  We stayed in a campground very near the park that offered a view of the dunes. The campground also had a large concession area and rented boards for surfing on the sand.  (We did not try this.)

Our campsite. Sparse but with great views of the valley and dunes

View of the dunes from our campsite.

At the park visitor center.  There is a stream between here and the dunes beyond.

The dunes to climb. One of the tallest on the left.

On our way up. 8000' + altitude.

The wind continually erases and creates new peaks.

We started to climb early since it would get hotter in the afternoon. Climbing is really hard because the sand is soft and you sink in a little. It is really hard work and the altitude does not help you strength or stamina.  Also, when you think you reached a top dune, you discover more dunes beyond.  We only went about a third of the way up.

Looking back at the valley. Our campsite was down there a ways on the left

Your shoes collect a lot of sand.

We had a very pretty sunset.

We also visited a nearby fort.  It was built nearby but they determined it would not be a good location to defend so they moved it to this current location.  It is now a museum with very nice displays of the history of this area.

We left the area on Thursday and headed through Colorado and Kansas taking highway 50. We went through Cimarron,  Dodge City, Wichita, to Nevada, MO and picked up highway 54, which took us to Osage Beach.  We planned to spend the Labor Day weekend at the lake and made it Friday night.  We had to park our trailer at Lake of the Ozarks State Park since we could not park our trailer at our condo lot due to rules that only allow boat trailers.  The state park is very near our condo so, other than the added expense, it was not a problem.   We returned home on Tuesday, after the Labor Day weekend.

Post Wedding in Santa Fe

We stuck around for a few days to help clean up and return things from the wedding, like the sound equipment.  On Sunday, Megan hitched a ride with Keri and Elliott to the airport. We planned to stay until Tuesday so we could take Kevin and Cina to the airport for their honeymoon trip to New Zealand.
After helping Megan clean out her condo and get over to Keri's, we had the rest of Sunday to ourselves. We took a trip up to Bandelier National Monument, which is a deserted Native American settlement located in a valley northwest of Santa Fe. It is near Los Alamos.
Bandelier features several cave dwellings carved into the rock walls of the valley plus remains of large settlements on the valley floor.

Cave dwelling. Not real deep.

Foundations from the ancient settlement

The mesa where this settlement is located is built up from ash from a volcanic eruption. The rock is fairly soft which allowed the early americans to carve these dwellings.

Overlook of Rio Grande river

 On the way back from Bandelier, there is an overlook of the Rio Grande river, which starts in the mountains north of Santa Fe.
On Monday, we took Kevin and Cina to the airport. On the way back we stopped at another National Monument called Tent Rocks.

Another cave dwelling at Tent Rocks

These structures are what give Tent Rocks its name.

These are also called hoodoos

Hanging out with the hoodoos

We returned to Santa Fe and toured the miraculous Loretto Chapel. It has a fantastic spiral staircase that takes two full turns to reach the choir loft. The story is that the nuns prayed for a solution and a carpenter appeared and build the stairs with just hand tools and no nails. It has no center supporting column. The nuns believed it was St. Joseph himself who answered their prayers.  The carpenter left and did not ask for payment.  The original stairs did not have a hand rail and the nuns were too scared to use the steps. A local carpenter added a hand rail 10 years later. It is a beautiful work of art and intriguing story.

The miraculous Loretto staircase

 We are planning to leave Santa Fe the next morning (Tuesday) and start our journey back.

Kevin's Wedding

It has been a long time since the last post.  The holidays and such got in the way of blogging progress. At the last post, we were in Santa Fe at the campground, touring a bit, and getting ready for the wedding. This post covers the wedding, which occurred on August 24, 2019.

Katie, Megan, and I, plus others, arrived early at the Randall Davey Audubon Center to set up and decorate for the festivities, which started around 1:00.  We first went to Megan's condo to pick up flowers, centerpieces and other floral decorations. Megan pulled an all-nighter to get these ready.

The weather was beautiful. It was a clear, sunny day and cool in the morning but got a bit warm in the afternoon, especially in the sun.  The site is in a valley outside of Santa Fe with beautiful views of foothills. The center has a brand new building set up for events. It has a kitchen, bathrooms and dance floor. It also is open on the side that faces the valley giving a wonderful view of the event.

Sign greeting guests as they arrived on the shuttle bus. Mix up on the wording for one of the signs. 

Megan's mess, getting the flowers ready at the center

The new event facility. Dance and catering space inside, patio for tables.

Randall Davey's original house, an historic site.

The commitment ceremony, presided by their friends that introduced them

Customized corn hole game.

Kevin and Cina had the event catered by a Mexican restaurant that provide excellent food. Whole foods provided pies and cakes for dessert. Kevin brought is some beer from the Santa Fe brewery.  Everyone had a great time.  The highlight of the festivities was a choreographed wedding dance put on by Kevin and Cina. It started as a standard slow dance and then morphed into a complete dance routine. It was the hit of the wedding. Cina, who studied dance, designed the routine and they practiced for a month prior to the wedding. 

The famous wedding dance.