1. Plymouth, MN
2. Fort Collins, CO
3. Naperville, IL
4. Irvine, CA
5. Franklin Township, NJ
6. Norman, OK
7. Round Rock, TX
8. Columbia/Ellicott City, MD
9. Overland Park, KS
10. Fishers, IN

Other Colorado cities to make the list: Highlands Ranch (#12), Loveland (#33), Westminster (#44), Longmont (#50).

This morning we had leftovers for breakfast, since the hotel food had been suboptimal (fake butter, fake syrup, lots of white flour).  Then we spent some time in the pool, hot tub and sauna.  Once we were able to drag the kids away from that, we packed up and checked out of the Inn of the Rio Grande.  Despite their crappy hotel food, the rest of our experience there was absolutely wonderful.

We then headed up to Zapata Falls.  Though we’d been to the dunes before, we’d never even known about the falls.  But my friend Leslie told me they were worth the trip and the gal I chatted with in the sauna agreed – the falls were a must.  

Just taking in the view from the parking lot at the beginning of the hike was worth it.  We could see all of the San Luis Valley, as well as the dunes, the San Juan mountains, and the parts of the Sangre de Christos that we weren’t standing on.  

The hike went much more smoothly than I had expected.  The info. from the website that I had printed out said it was a fairly steep hike.  But it honestly wasn’t bad and even went much faster than I would have expected with three kids in tow who kept insisting on playing in the untouched snow along the sides of the trail.

As we entered the crevasse that the water flowed out of, we didn’t even realize we were walking right on top of the stream.  Instead, we were mesmerized by the huge bubbles of ice along the right side wall of the mini-canyon.  The kids had a blast sliding down them.  Then we walked in a little more and were awed by the falls.  They were incredibly cool.  The falls to the left looked completely frozen, but you could see the water flowing beneath the falls on the right

Two ice climbers came along and we waited while they donned their gear (which seemed to take forever) and started their climb.  I’ve never seen anyone climb ice before.  To be perfectly honest, although it was interesting to watch, the sport just doesn’t appeal to me.  Climbing a rock is one thing.  Climbing ice?  I think I’ll pass.

We then got gas in Alamosa ($3.25/gal.) and stopped at a café for lunch while Rob took a conference call for work.  Then we settled in for the two hour ride to Santa Fe.  

Along the way we tried to figure out who Fe was.  Anyone know of a Saint Fe (or Fey, more likely, eh?)

We saw a large heard of antelope.  They were standing in the road but moved when they saw us coming.  

Then we hit Española.   Let’s just say that what we had expected to take 20 more minutes rolled into an hour and a half as we first took a few wrong turns, then tried to find a hotel that had both a vacancy and a pool.  We finally ended up at a Holiday Inn with horrible internet service.  (Though I was able to connect at first, the service then dropped out on me completely. It wasn’t until I made some rather unsavory comments to it that it finally started working again Wednesday morning.)

We headed out to Maria’s, a Mexican restaurant that I had heard good things about on PlaceShout.  We had no trouble finding the place (for a change), but when we went to park, we turned after the building instead of before it and next thing we knew we were a major street away, stuck in a parking lot.  I reread my printout (to see if there was a tip about where to park) and noticed that there was a note about making reservations.  Mama mia!  So I called (while we were getting turned around) and found out there was a 40 minute wait.  It was 7 o’clock by that point and we were all hungry and tired, so instead we hit The Upper Crust closer to downtown Santa Fe.  (Parking was again a mini-nightmare, but the pizza was decent.)

On our way back we raided a Trader Joe’s and upon arriving at the hotel we collectively devoured a package of cheesecake brownies.  That helped to make up for our driving troubles getting into Santa Fe. 

For more pics from the day, click here.

Today, we conquered giants.  

The day started out normally enough – Rob’s alarm went off and I was the only one to hear it.  The girls managed to sleep in a little longer than yesterday (and I’ve noticed that the amount of arguing and complaining has gone down dramatically today compared to yesterday, despite the giants we had to conquer).   

We had breakfast in the hotel, then we set off for Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.  It was a bit cold as we started out (36 F), but we had high hopes that the sun would be beating down on the sand, heating it up.  We’d seen pretty strong winds yesterday so we were glad that the sage brush along the side of the road wasn’t blowing in the wind.  (In the first picture, you can see the Sangri de Cristo mountains with the dunes in the foreground (from the left of the picture to the middle).  The land between the road and the dunes is mostly scrub with rather sandy ground.)

But as we got to within 5 or 10 miles of the dunes, the wind started to pick up.  We saw trees leaning a bit sideways.  And as we hit the turn off into the park, I looked towards the mountains and saw that it was snowing.  …  Yes, snowing.  … Sideways.  (Look at that first pic again.  See the cloudiness over the mountains on the right hand side.  That's snow.)

We decided to go in anyway.  The plan was to hit the visitors’ center first, wait for the snow to stop, then try to climb the dunes.  Anna had wanted to bring her swimsuit (for the stream that runs along the side of the dunes that we played in last time we were here) and by this point we were all saying, “Good thing we didn’t bother bringing the swimsuits, eh?”  Rob was laughing in disbelief at the force of the wind. (At which point I reminded him that he was the one who had packed mostly shorts for the trip.)

The ranger at the entrance gate tried to cheer us up a bit.  He pointed out that just 15 minutes before, he couldn’t see the cars parked 30 feet away because the snow was so thick.  But now he could not only see the cars, but the mountain behind them.  I don’t know about the rest of the family, but I didn’t find it all that encouraging.  Nevertheless, we soldiered on.

At the visitors center we watched a movie about the Dunes and played with the displays.  (There was a lot of hands on stuff to fiddle with.)  Here’s some of what we learned:

* These are the tallest dunes in North America.   !!!
* The dunes are 30 miles across.
* Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is one of the most biologically and geologically diverse parks in the United States.  It even has at least 7 insect species that are found no where else in the world.

We also found out, thanks to the movie, that it's often windy at the dunes... especially in the spring.

The snow had... well, lets just say that it was falling (streaming sideways, rather) less thickly than it had been when we arrived.  So we bravely set off for the dunes. 

Upon arriving, we saw two other cars in the parking lot.  That was encouraging.  At least we knew we weren't the only crazy people in the state of Colorado. We headed out.  The first thing I noticed (besides the wind throwing sand and snow in my face) was that the creek bed was dry.

OK, let me just back up one quick second.  When we came to the dunes last time (June, several years ago) the creek was the funnest part of the visit.  That's why Anna was upset this morning when I told her that we probably wouldn't be donning our swimsuits today. So before setting out on this trip I asked several people if they thought the creek would be flowing by now.  Most seemed to think it would be.  Well, if I had just known about this page, I could have found out that the creek is FROZEN still, on the eastern end of the dunes.  In which case we probably would have skipped Alamosa entirely and headed straight on to Santa Fe. 

So we crossed the dry creek bed, climbed over several dunes (they felt like giants even if we didn't exactly tackle the real giants out there), froze just about any exposed parts of our bodies (Rob started to lose feeling in his hands.  My ears hurt. -- Check out the picture with me and the kids on the dunes.  Nathan's cheeks were bright red.  Nathan at Rob had gone to the top of a much higher dune than the girls or I tackled.  They were promptly sand blasted with freezing sand.)

Needless to say, we didn't stay long.  We had to walk backwards to the car so that we didn't get sand in our eyes and mouths.  (We still managed to do both, however.)  I kept encouraging the kids that they were being very brave and this was something that we'd look back on in 10 years and laugh about.  Though there was some whimpering and crying (and the kids were a little upset, too) we generally made it through with courageous spirits.  I was proud of them all.

We got back to the hotel and celebrated our survival with a whole lot of playing in the pool.  I hit the sauna first while the kids and Rob played in the regular pool.  Then we went to the indoor water park and had a blast.  It definitely made up for all that we'd gone through in the morning.

Though the pool, sauna, hot tub, etc. are all free to anyone staying in the hotel, there's usually a charge to get into the water park.  But seeing as no one was even on duty, we got in free and had the place entirely to ourselves for probably 2 hours.  I went down the slide 20 - 30 times.  Rob started a game where he'd toss a volleyball up to us while we were sliding down.  And Anna learned how to do a back float without help.  After the water park we spent some time in the hot tub, and then we zonked out in the room for awhile.  (The kids watched a movie and Rob and I checked email.)

For dinner we went back to the San Luis Valley Brewery and this time I got the double blond, which was excellent.  They had several St. Patrick's day specials and many people were dressed for the day (including two guys wearing stuffed green mugs of beer on their head). Again, our food was excellent, and we even got some grasshopper cheesecake, which was eaten so quickly that by the time I got my camera out, this was all that was left. 

Back at the hotel, Rob and Nathan had just started a game of pool when I decided to drag everyone out to watch the crane migration.  (Click through to see a great picture of it.) Unfortunately, all we saw were ducks.  Rob saw a large bird come in, but he didn't see it clearly and the rest of us all missed it. 

We came back to the hotel, Nathan and Rob finished their game of pool, then we watched the Simpsons movie (which I thought was OK and Rob didn't like at all). 

I took way too many pictures today to include in this post, so you'll have to click through here for the photo album.

Jim's pictures of Colorado (and particularly of Fort Collins) inspired me last Saturday to snap a few photos of my own of our fair city.  We had gotten about an inch of snow on Friday and a light dusting over the night.  Usually the snow doesn't stay on the trees, but the first round of snow was so heavy and wet that it clung to the branches, making for spectacular winter scenes.

I was on my way to the Alley Cat Cafe, when I decided to spin by CSU for a few photos.  ("Spin" refers to the fact that I was on my bike.  I don't usually bike in the snow, but it wasn't very deep and it was quite crunchy, so I didn't slide at all.  It was crunchy because of the temperature.  I'm getting to that....)  I figured that The Oval would be beautiful with all the snow on the trees so I headed that way and wasn't disappointed.

I parked my bike and took a few photos, which I had to do with gloves off.  I'm surprised my camera even worked out in that weather.  When I pedaled past the Key Bank building (which has a time and temperature display), it was 16 degrees F.  (That's -9 C.)  My fingers could barely take it, so I didn't hang out long. 

The Oval, despite the similarity of having a geometric name and shape, is nothing like The Diag that I'm used to from my college days.  At the University of Michigan, the Diag (where two diagonal walkways cross in front of the Grad. Library) is in the center of campus and is a popular place to hang out, sunbathe, toss a frisbee, protest, preach and generally immerse oneself in the essence and aroma of university life. The Oval, on the other hand, is somewhat off to one side of campus.  I suspect it might have been central long ago, but now the CSU equivalent of U of M's Diag is located around the libary and Lory Student Center.  The Oval still has its events (I attended a dog show there once.), and it has its share of sunbathers and frisbee throwers (obviously not now, but as recently as a week ago we had some lovely 70 degree days), but it tends to be a quieter, more introspective sort of place to hang out.  (And the oval shaped road that circumscribes the grassy island makes a fun place to bike around with the kids, ...or for me when I just want to think without having to think about where I'm going.)


By the time I made it to the Alley Cat (which is only about 1/2 a block north of here) I was frozen to the bone.  But two steaming hot mugs of Alley Cat Chai brought me back to my senses. 

Since Saturday we've gotten several more inches of snow.  The trees are still snow covered and the, now fluffy, snow is about 6 inches deep (with a nice crunchy layer of icy snow underneath).

I wouldn't bike in it at this point.  (With this much powder, it's hard to tell where the icy patches are.)   So we walked to school this morning, enjoying the gently falling snow.