Iron Sky Tour 2012, III

We did get a pretty cool car. Thank you, Avis. They gave us a brandnew (2 miles on the meter) 2012 Subaru Outback. With Harman Kardon speakers. 🙂 Buena Vista was nice, right on the foot of the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. Good place to stretch your legs.

We stayed for two nights, then got up early and drove south to Great Sand Dunes NP. We stopped by San Luis lake, beautiful panorama but also gazillions of bloodthirsty bugs. You couldn’t get out of the car, they would have sucked you dry within seconds. So sand dunes it was. Really strange – you have these giant sand dunes in front of snow capped mountains. But it was absolutely worth it, beautiful scenery and a nice workout. We hiked up the highest dune and I can now totally relate to all those stories of people getting lost in the desert etc. You totally underestimate distances and gradients. And it doesn’t really help that you are sinking/slinding back two steps for every step you take. But I liked that. Would be great to have that on my doorstep, nice workout in the morning before going to work. 🙂

After the sand dunes we drove a few miles to Zapata Falls. Looked boring at first, but once you have discovered where to go, it’s amazing. (You have to walk through the stream, round the ‚corner‘ to see the amazin spray of water coming out of the ice!)

We then drove all the way west to Mancos, crossing a number of paths with well, the tourist brochure would call it „breathtaking vistas“ I guess. And that they were, so good onion!