Day 15: Flexibility is Key

Due to internet issues, we again had to post two and again without pictures. Once we have proper internet, we're going to go back and post all our favorite pictures to their corresponding blogs fyi...

We got up at 6:30am to get an early start to a long day of driving and exploring. The drive from NM to the Grand Canyon is really only about 9.5 hours, but one of Mere’s dreams since she was little has been to see enormous sand dunes. So a few days ago, Ashley was talking on the phone to her cousin Heather and mentioned this. Heather informed us that there are, in fact, amazing sand dunes at The Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado and that it may not be too far off our path. With this information, there was no way that adding an extra two hours to the trip was enough to deter us from making this dream of Mere’s come true!

Some information about the Great Sand Dune National Park in Colorado:

- These are the largest sand dunes in all of North America

- The dunes cover 330 square miles

- The sand at the dunes primarily originated from the San Juan Mountains which are over 65 miles west of the dunes

- Originally, there was a lake that eventually dried up. The sand from the lake as well as nearby mountains was moved by the wind and settled where it is now. There are two main creeks that run on either sides of the dunes in the mountains and these keep the sand contained to the dune area.

- The dunes are between 12,000 to one million years old, research is ongoing

We arrived at the park a little after 9:00am and we were certainly not disappointed - it was definitely well worth the two-hour detour! We had planned to only spend an hour there and ended up staying until noon, but it was really hard to drag ourselves away. We hiked to the second highest peak in the park (which was the highest peak most people were hiking), which was 650 feet from the bottom. The highest peak in the park is 750 feet tall! The view was out of this world and the pictures don’t do it justice. It was a hard hike and took almost three times as long to climb up as it did to clime down. At one point, there was this “dune crater” (a very scientific term that we coined right now) and Mere decided to roll down it like a log. She felt a little nauseous after but was glad she did it anyway. It is about 10 hours later and she still has sand in her ears. At the peak, we met another German couple (he was originally from Montana, they were on vacation for five weeks visiting the states, she was German) that was very friendly and took our picture. The only thing that would have made the trip to the park better was if we had boards to ride down the dunes as a few others were doing. It looked like a blast - next time we will make this a priority.

We determined this park is well worth a visit for anyone coming to the area. In fact, we have decided that a great vacation would be to go to Santa Fe, Taos, and then the Great Sand Dune National Park because they are each only a couple hours apart and all three are amazing places with so much to do. It was also great going to the dunes this time of year because it was definitely hot by the time we got to the top, but not uncomfortable. We were told that the sand can heat up to 104 degrees (sneakers are a must, even though they got completely filled with sand)! By the time we were leaving there was a huge elementary school group that had arrived, and we determined that this would probably be the best field trip ever.

Our one complaint at the sand dunes was that both the ranger inside the visitor center and the person we paid at the gate were less than amused when we tried to give them post cards. The man inside said it was his last day and wouldn’t take a postcard (lamest reason ever); the man outside at the gate reluctantly took one and said he was going to give it to his nine year old daughter…. so that could be cool.

Our next stop was the four corners, which was conveniently on our route. We thought it was about an hour away from the dunes… boy were we mistaken. It was 5 and a half hours away… probably the longest five hours ever. We looked at our trusty GPS (who we have referred to at various points as “Gips”, “G-Unit”, or “Garmina”) about 6 times just to make sure we were on the right track. Fortunately, the drive there was the most stunning drive either of us has ever been on. Colorado is absolutely extraordinary, particularly on this one stretch that was about an hour or two long. Each turn was even more breathtaking than the last – so much so that the scenery almost looked fake. We stopped at one overlook and were blown away by the view. We determined that CO would be perfect if it had a coast. We met two nice men at the overlook, and when we asked them to take our picture, they took approximately ten.

Then, five and a half hours later, we arrived at the four corners. Ashley had been particularly excited about this. Unfortunately, as much as the sand dunes exceeded our expectations, we were utterly underwhelmed by the four corners. First off, it was $3 (the same price as the sand dunes), which was basically to just take a picture in the middle of nowhere. It was kind of cool to be in four places at once (we wish we could do this all the time) but aside from that novelty, we were a little disappointed. The area itself looked a little deserted… there were a lot of empty buildings and closed food huts – everything just looked a little desolate. Ah well, at least we can say we’ve been…and know we don’t have to go back again. Another disappointment was that Meredyth really needed to use the bathroom but to her dismay, all they had were wooden stalls with port-a-potty toilets in them with black holes to the middle of the earth. This caused Meredyth to determine that there should be a revolving toilet on the four corners so you can simultaneously pee on all four states at once. Now that would be worth paying $3 for…this may be our ticket out of here…

We continued our never-ending drive and by the time the time changed again (so we were in four places at once AND time traveled all in one day… not too shabby), we were pretty loopy to say the least. Meredyth stopped to get a salad at Burger King and when we went in, we were shocked to see that the BK was complete with an educational monument to Native American history – an education center. Picture a kiosk with a computer and a small exhibit, right next to the ketchup and napkins table. Random? Yes. The computer website was open to the exhibit’s homepage and Meredyth promptly opened our blog instead (they really should have it locked so no one can change that…good thing she has mad skillz….to pay billz).

Please note: This post is being written from the car and is completely reflective of our limited mental capacity and the delirious state we are currently in. We still have over 2 hours of driving…and it’s already 7:30 pacific time. FML. Good thing we love each other.

(Many) Observations from our epic drive/ day:

- We met 2 little boys at the sand dunes park and their names were Will and Jack (and the dad lived in Woodbridge, VA!). Dad (Ashley’s Dad) – I thought of you. They also gave us a bottle of water because we were probably the only people on the hike sans water.

- In CO we passed a school bus and the driver was an old man wearing a cowboy hat and the kids were getting dropped off by the bus to a tractor.

- We started talking about how people can change their name when they move to new places, start college, etc, and no one would ever know that they just took on a new identity. This spurred the question: how long would it take Ashley to get a job if she changed her name to Boobie McCormack? We practiced introducing ourselves to each other with a straight face. No shocker, Meredyth was able to introduce herself as “Boobie” easier than Ashley. Task for readers: Practice this and tell us if you are able to accomplish this with a straight face. Good luck.

- We were trying to catch up on the news (because we are both news junkies but have been completely out of the loop the last couple weeks) so we listened to NPR this morning. We learned about the Delaware primary and that women are for the first time earning more PhDs then men, but are still being grossly underpaid at Universities. Totally depressing. To continue our trend of finding out what is going on in the world outside of this fabulous, unnamed CRV, at a gas station stop we tried to pick up a NYT or Washington Post. Instead, we left with a Cosmopolitian magazine, which as always never failed to provide us with new and interesting information. For example, did you know that if a man makes less money than his wife or is dependant on her for income, he is 5 times more likely to cheat on her? We didn’t either. Lets just say that if we’re the primary breadwinners in our families, we hope this is not always true. We learned many other fun facts as well, but we won’t bore you with those now.

- It was interesting because Ashley noticed that the horse crossing signs (not sure if it was in NM or CO) are different than in VA – here they just have horses instead of a person riding a horse. Does this mean horses roam free?

- At one point we were reflecting on how we just blindly follow the GPS – we could be going anywhere and we’d never know. Sometimes we wish that iwe were still back in the days of paper maps. But it would probably take us a lot longer to get places.

- We are totally bummed that gas is greatly increasing in price, so long $2.40 gas, hello $3.00 gas. This is what Ashley gets for saying that they should increase gas prices to discourage people from driving so much. That has come back to kick us in the ass.

- Even if we wanted to, particularly in CO or when we are going up inclines, we couldn’t speed because Ashley’s car has the pick up of a 90-year-old grandma. Maybe Ashley’s mom did this to prevent her lead foot from getting us in trouble…we will never know.

- We noticed that there are lots of songs about California – California Girls, California Dreaming, Hotel California, California (by Phantom Planet), California Girls (Beach Boys), Save Me San Francisco (Train), Heads Carolina, Tails California… so many…

- On the song note, some of our favorite songs to listen to on this trip: Magic by BOB, If You’re Wondering if I want you (I Want you Too) by Weezer (thanks Jenna and Brian!!), Taking the Long Way by the Dixie Chicks, Always Be My Baby by Mariah Carey, Eenie Meenie by Justin Beiber and Sean Kingston

- We miss the 70 mph speed limits. CO is a fan of the 65 mph.

- We adore roadside flowers – purple and yellow dominate.

- At one point in the drive, Ashley mentioned how she wished that we had one of those electronic maps (like they have on airplanes) that shows you how far you are on your trip and where you are on a map. Oh wait, that would be our GPS that we have been using the whole trip. All would agree that Ashley has said far more astute things in her lifetime than this comment.

- Brownies are always good the next day if underbaked – some people just don’t understand this. We are glad we both do.

- We decided you should never floss and drive.

- We often ask each other “what if you lived in that house?” Sometimes we are envious that we don’t, sometimes we are thankful.

- We have also asked ourselves several times “What would happen if we ran out of gas here, in this random place with no other cars and cell phone service.” We think we’d be SOL.

- Meredyth asked today, “Why do people sing along to song?” It is pretty hard not to, but why is this the case?

- Do horses appreciate their view? Bet they don’t as much as you would Lauren :).

- We also think it would be a good idea at Christmas time to wrap some of these massive boulders we have been passing with Christmas lights.

- It is amazing how much different topography we have driven through. If we aren’t too lazy and have decent Internet, we’ll post pictures we’ve taken throughout our drive today. If they aren’t here that is because we are lazy pieces of shit and want to leave it up to your imagination.

After we arrived at the Grand Canyon National Park in the pitch-black darkness (NO other cars were around…), we drove the 10 miles or so into the forest to find our hotel. Everything was going just fine until we smelled something funny and suddenly we were driving through a thick cloud of smoke. We couldn’t really see anything and definitely were FREAKING OUT considering that when we looked to our left we saw that THE FOREST WAS ABLAZE! Well, that is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, but we saw at least 15 trees or so on fire across about a half-mile drive. Then we saw an ambulance drive by, and considering we were the only ones on the road we had seen so far, we were legitimately wishing we could click our heels and NOT be in the park anymore… But, being the troopers that we are, we kept driving, assuming that perhaps forest fires were normal in the canyon. We eventually made it to our hotel and no one acted like anything was wrong, so I guess everything will be fine for tomorrow(??). We’re just excited we didn’t decide to camp in the canyon these two upcoming nights.

If you have gotten to the end of this blog post and your eyes haven’t glazed over, you are amazing and definitely love us. We hope we have at least provided you with entertainment. Thanks for reading and not giving up on us.

Our take home from the day was that flexibility is key – being flexible on our route (and making it a little painfully long) was still worth seeing the sand dunes, as was our pit stop over look in Colorado. Sleep is for the weak. Can’t wait to be stunned by the Grand Canyon in the morning!!!

Miles to go: 846

Total Post Cards Given Out: ??

Post Cards Received: 8 (although one was from our friend Sarah so THANKS SO MUCH!!)

States Traveled: VA, MD, WV, PA, OH, KY, TN, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ