Design

Sometimes something miraculous happens right in front of your eyes and you can only watch with amazement at God's attention to detail in His design.

  -Photo by Allen Sullivan on the Indiana University Campus

Black and White

I'm going to finish posting about the rest of my summer soon.  Our adventures have most definitely not stopped with the end of the trip to Arizona.  However, I feel like taking a short break in vacation memoirs at this point and posting about something more recent, and yet something much older, that Allen and I have been working on.  Today, we brought the 2 hours worth of tapes, full of action and adventure in Italy on our 2006 adventure, to the IU Library.  We've been trying for the past 3 hours to convert them into digital info so they can be edited and make their world premier.  We are both slowly figuring out how to use Final Cut Pro (the Macintosh video editing software), but the going is slow with only YouTube video tutorials.  


We also pulled out our photos from that trip and we have been reveling in the warm Mediterranean, black and white, memories...

This guy is mostly rubbed away because thousands have touched him expecting a blessing

Italians and their Ferraris...

La strada...

Sometimes its nice to go back to fond, old, memories, even when you are frustrated with the technology that would allow you to enjoy those memories more...

"Chi la dura la vince."

Upward Juxtapositions

Leaving our beautiful campground in Colorado found us again heading eastward along Highway 160 and through the Rio Grande National Forest.  We had to cross Wolf Pass which is 10,857 foot mountain that sits on the Continental Divide. The mountain is steep and slow-going up the side, then fast if you're not careful going down the other. Remember we were pulling a trailer:

The Pass is legendary: CW McCall sang about it.

I'm glad they didn't have to pick US up with a "stick and a spoon!" ;)

We did stop at the very top and enjoyed the view and the snow.

As fate would have it, all three girl's morning coffee caught up with them around the summit and we all had to find a restroom!!!

Hurry Terry!  Hurry!  Just don't fall off the edge of the cliff OK?

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After finding a bathroom in Pagosa Springs, we turned northward, still following highway 160 toward the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  Allen kept describing it as we drove because he had been there as a child.  But no description really does it justice.  Sometime, you all just have to go see it for yourself.  

It looks like the Sahara got picked up, blown across the world, and dumped in the middle of the Colorado Mountains.  

Allen is pointing to the peak that he, Jenae, and I climbed.  We REALLY did make it to the summit!  And what did we see after 2 hours of trudging through the sand, you might ask?  

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MORE SAND!!!!!

The dunes go on for what looks like forever!!  And they are a crazy juxtaposition to the snow we had just played in a couple hours above at Wolf Creek Pass.

The dunes actually cover 30 square miles, which would seem like forever if you were caught in the middle of them.  

Luckily, while the dunes look like the barren Sahara desert, they are not quite as hot.  At the end of June, the park is somewhere around a comfortable 80 degrees.  The sand itself was hot, I wouldn't have wanted to climb it barefoot, or with just sandals.  But, with tennis shoes, it wasn't bad.  We took a LOT of breaks and carried 2 water bottles a piece.  The hardest parts of the trek were climbing up the very steep areas.  A 55-60 degree incline is hard enough when the ground under your feet is solid.  But when it gives with every step, you have to take about 3 steps for every one on normal footing.

 Sand with snow peaked mountains in the distance

The tree line, where the sand ends, is our starting point.  And even though the walk looks flat, it is NOT.  Its an illusion.  In fact, on top, everything below us looked flat.  But, we can tell you, every hill was about a 30 foot change in elevation.  And in total, the summit we reached was 300 feet above where we started.

Terry and Laura opted to stay below and watch us with binoculars and a camera.  They got some awesome shots:

We are the tiny dots at the top.

Climbing up.

Coming down was easier than going up.  Basically, you could run flat out down a 60 degree hill and not fall.  You just sink in the sand with each leap and it "catches" you.  

We were pretty proud of ourselves for defeating the dunes.

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Then: they always say what goes up, must come down.  After our great and inspiring hike...it was about 1 more hour of driving until we made the worst mistake of the trip. 

:<

The first rating when you look up Corine's Mexican food in Walsenberg, CO is mine.  Yes, we got food poisoning.  Actually, the girls got through the experience fairly unscathed.  Allen and Terry did not fair so well though.  :/  We shouldn't have eaten it.  We know.  We'll know better next time.  It was nasty.  That's all I have to say.

After eating, we drove through the flat, barren part of Eastern Colorado along tiny highway 10 to La Junta and our campground for the night.  The campground was fine, but we were back in mosquito country and Jenae and I tried swimming, but had trouble enjoying it because of the mosquito infestation.  That night, we were tired after our journeys and enjoyed our night's sleep.

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The next day, the food poisoning really hit the guys.  It was bad, but we still had to travel home. Plus, there wasn't much going on in La Junta.  We did stop by an old western fort on our way out of Colorado which was neat.  But the boys felt so bad...we felt sorry for them.  

Allen did rally to pet a very tame long horn that was loose near the fort.  They actually allow them to rome free, even into the parking lot.  

After the fort we drove to Dodge City, Kansas.  209 miles with two food poisoned passengers is far enough!  We stopped earlier than we had ever stopped before on the trip and Jenae and I (feeling fine) enjoyed watching two movies while everyone else slept and recovered from the Walsenberg debacle.  

The next morning we took the time to pack everything from the camper and into the truck.  Dodge City had been our last campground and we planned not to open the camper again until after we arrived in Arkansas.  Our trip home took us through Wichita and Tulsa and the sight of Rogers was good for our eyes.  Allen and I still had to make our 500 miles way back to Bloomington, but Rogers feels like home and like they say..."no matter how far you wander, there's no place like home."

We were glad and yet sad to have made the trip and to have made it back.

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It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be.” – Selma Lager

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Next up on the blog: my journeys to Indianapolis and Kentucky with my family!  Stay tuned!

Sandstorm!

We decided that our drive back from Arizona would be more exiting if we forged a new path through Colorado and Kansas, rather than just back east on I-40.  It was sad to leave the beauty of Page and to know that we were no longer heading westward, but the scenery and then the weather kept us too enthralled to care about our new direction for long.

 It was somewhere on highway 160 that we stopped at a gas station to fill up.  Going in to use the restrooms, we laughed as large puppies ran up and down the aisles.  We must have been on a reservation, either that, or we were just so far from civilization that no one cared or checked on health codes.  The puppies didn't bother anything in the aisles and the store owner was quite unperturbed by their romping.

It wasn't long after the gas station that the sand storm started.  We could see it on the horizon, a huge brown cloud growing larger as we drove East.  Several motorcyclists stopped and turned back as the winds began to pick up.

We really didn't get a picture that shows the true fury of the storm.  In the pinnacle of it, we could only see about 20 feet in front of us.  If we had been outside it would have been horrible.  I can't imagine how  settlers and Native Americans weathered a storm like that.  But, in the truck, it was exciting!  

Between gusts we still enjoyed the scenery:

 The wind died down a little for me to take a picture of this owl shaped rock formation.

Monument valley was a little sandy...we didn't get the best pictures, but it was amazing anyway.

As we turned Northward toward the four-corners and my first steps into Utah, the landscape became a little more green.  The wind was still whipping, but there was less sand to fly through the air.

The wind was SO strong that as Allen and I walked back into Arizona and to the truck, I held Allen's arm because I thought I might literally blow away!

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We next crossed over into Colorado and turned toward the Mesa Verde.  

Mesa Verde means Green Table, but it is more like a mountain than a table.  Signs told us to unhook our trailer and leave it at the bottom, and it was a good thing!  The incline took us up to a lookout point where we should have been able to see 20 miles in all directions.  But, really, all we could see was the sandstorm.  We didn't stay on top very long because, as funny as it seems, at 8000 feet elevation, it was COLD!  I was in shorts and all I could do was shiver.  We did take a few pictures of the terrain, though because there had been a fire in 2006 and the combination of the death and new growth was beautiful.

The main attraction at Mesa Verde is the well preserved cliff dwellings of the Pueblo Native American's ancestors.  We took the guided tour of "Cliff Palace," but this is another park that could take a week to thoroughly explore.  

That night we stopped in Durango, Co and enjoyed the cool camping weather.  We ate pizza at the hip Home Slice Pizza company 

http://homeslicedelivers.com/

Terry had the spaghetti and meatball deep dish (YUM!)

And I enjoyed the 

Excellent blue cheese, apple, and chicken pizza dude! ;)

The campsite was really pretty and even though we didn't use it, I was impressed that they had a community herb garden open to whomever wished to use it.

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A quick trip to good old Wal-Mart for supplies and another beautiful night under the stars brought our day of adventures to a close.  We had weathered the sandstorm, explored ancient civilizations, climbed mountains, and loved us some pizza...We were a little closer to home, but still loving every second of our adventures out West.

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. Vincent Van Gogh