Over The Continental Divide + Into The Thin Air

Work

Due to the fact that I’ll be unavailable to work from Thursday through Monday, I had to log some substantial hours this morning before leaving. Luckily, the internet connection at the Movie Manor was actually pretty good and the dresser served as the perfect height for a standing desk. It’s still difficult working on a single laptop screen when I’m used to dual monitors at home, but I made due.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

I wrapped things up around 10:30 and was on the road to Great Sand Dunes National Park around 11:00 and arrived at noon, which is a tough time to arrive at a national park on such a beautiful day. It was really busy but not so much that I couldn’t find parking at the two lots I stopped at. This time, I actually got out on the dunes themselves, which become surprisingly more gigantic when you do that. I mean, from the distance, you’re thinking, “Yeah, those are pretty big.” Then you begin climbing one and it changes to, “Holy shit, these things are really, really huge… and not easy to climb at all!” Before leaving, I left the stone that I made for the park in a picnic area. I’m feeling better about leaving the stones in places like that rather than actually in the park areas themselves, which feels more like littering.

UFO Watchtower

Right outside Great Sand Dunes is what I’d call a participatory outsider art exhibit. Supposedly, psychics have visited the area and say that there are vortexes in the area. Visitors are encouraged to leave something behind and wouldn’t you know it I had one of my El Fenix stones on hand and felt it was more than appropriate to leave one of those. Not sure if I felt the vortexes.

Over The Continental Divide

After the UFO Watchtower, I opted for printing out the Google Map to my iPad and using that to navigate, rather than the GPS map on my car’s console. I don’t know… I feel like I’m achieving more or something. The trip through the mountains up to Monarch Pass and down to Gunnison, Colorado, was beautiful. The mountains are covered in aspen trees which are a bright yellow, all throughout the mountain sides, so it really pops amongst the green evergreen trees. I finally got hit by some of the rain clouds that I’d been seeing in the distance, but nothing too bad.

Gunnison and Crested Butte

After arriving at my friend Kurt’s home in Gunnison around 4 PM, and chatting with him and his wife Jennifer, Kurt and I headed-out to Crested Butte for a dinner of tacos, which was a welcome change from my peanut butter sandwich and Lara bar diet of the past few days. Kurt and I worked at the Burrito Buggy together while attending Ohio University in the late-90s. He’s one of the few people I’ve kept in touch with to some extent over the years, sharing similar tastes in music and humor.

Upon returning to Gunnison, we spent some time drinking a little while my bedding finished-up. Then, I gladly hit the bed around 10 PM and quickly fell asleep.

No Travel Date

On Wednesday, October 11, I worked during the day from my friend’s office, which was sorely needed. The next two days will be spent camping in Fremont Indian State Park in Utah. On Saturday morning, I’ll be witnessing the eclipse and then traveling to Kanab, Utah, overnight. And then, finally, I’ll be camping in Zion National Park on Sunday. Point being: I won’t have much time to work over the next five days, so it was great to log a solid eight hour day.