A photo of the mission style Catholic church in Fort Garland. Here's an interesting rundown on the history of Costilla County, where Fort Garland is located: http://cogenweb.com/costilla/history.htm The San Luis Valley has an interesting history!

I wonder how old this church is. Is it truly old, or is it "faux old"?

Cafe

Another image of the abandoned Ute Cafe in Fort Garland. My favorite part of this photo is the shadow of the lamp on the building.

The Ute Cafe

I took a few pictures of the Ute Cafe in Fort Garland as we headed back home from the Great Sand Dunes. Some of my photos were wider and took in the entire building, but I prefer the tighter shots that show the age and character of the place. This must have been a busy stop at one time, located on Highway 160 en route to Alamosa and parts beyond. Since the owner retired, apparently it's just been empty and teetering toward dilapidation. I don't know how long that's been but I do like how they have left their thoughts behind.

Fort Garland

On our drive home from the Great Sand Dunes, Pat and I stopped in Fort Garland to get a few pictures of the abandoned Ute Cafe, which we had spied earlier in the day. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot I noticed this abandoned building across the street and had to get a shot of it too. It looks like it must have once been a cafe, and at another point it was a thrift store, judging by the peeling layers of the facade.

According to this website, Fort Garland was established in 1858 as a military post. This building looks like it dates to the late 1800's or early 1900's. It looks so empty and sad! I hope someone fixes it up.

Blanca

On our way to the Sand Dunes, Pat and I spotted this giant, organic sculpture as we passed through the tiny town of Blanca. I wanted to photograph it in late afternoon light, so we made a point of stopping on our way back home.

I've never heard of Blanca. It's so small that it's only about two blocks long (I'm not kidding). According to their website, they have 402 residents. The San Luis Valley is largely agricultural, so I'm sure that farming and ranching are what life in Blanca revolves around. From what we could tell it's a peaceful, pretty place.

Alamosa

Our trip to the San Luis Valley took us to the town of Alamosa, more or less the urban hub of the entire area. I've only been there once and that was years ago, so I envisioned a sleepy little town. What we found was that Alamosa is a bustling little college burg! Okay, it's only four square miles and 4,000 residents, but it's hip. Where there's college, there's hipness, and Alamosa is no exception. The college in question is Adams State. This image is of the theater on campus. Very cool!

The Alligator Farm

After our hilariously brief visit to the Great Sand Dunes, Pat really wanted to check out the nearby Alligator Farm. This place is well known to Coloradoans, and it's gained a little bit of fame in general just for being an oddity. It's one of only a handful of places in the U.S. where you can receive training on how to properly handle alligators. According to their literature, the place started out many years ago as a fish farm (tilapia, to be exact). The thermal springs in the area provide a naturally warm water temperature year round. Gators were first brought in to consume dead fish. Now why they thought of gators for this task, I cannot tell you. I assume that most fish farms lose a certain amount of fish in their daily operations. How many of them employ alligators to rid themselves of the offal? It would seem that the alligators themselves would produce their own special kind of offal. Awful!

But I digress. Anyway, the place is just a few miles down the road from the national park, so it was easy to find. For some reason it was closed, but that didn't stop us from hanging out for a few minutes to look around and take a few pictures. As we were investigating, a pair of emus (yes, emus -- extremely large Australian flightless birds) came over to investigate us. Thank goodness they were behind a fence! They seemed friendly enough, but they were taller than me! They let me take their picture, which was very sweet of them.

What a strange place this alligator farm is. We didn't see any alligators, but we sure saw a lot of junk. As we were leaving I caught sight of this sign bidding us to drive five and-a-half miles north to check out the "UFO tower". Maybe next time!

Abandoned farmhouse

This abandoned farmhouse is on County Road 6 N between the Great Sand Dunes and the Alligator Farm. I thought it looked so perfect and symmetrical, like a little Monopoly house out on the prairie. That cloudy haze you see in the background is a dust storm.

Highway 150

Another image from our road trip to the Great Sand Dunes. This is Highway 150, inside the park. See the previous two posts for more images and details on the trip.

More sand dunes...

Another shot of the beautiful Great Sand Dunes. See yesterday's post for the hilarious details on how I got this image -- shooting directly into the wind, getting scoured by a crazy sand storm!

Pat and I both thought that this scene reminded us of the famous Salvador Dali painting, The Persistence of Memory.

Great Sand Dunes National Park

Yesterday Pat and I went on a road trip to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. We have been meaning to go there for ages. Pat had visited there once when he was a little kid, and I went there with my brother about 15 years ago, so it had been a really long time for both of us.

It takes about two hours to drive there from Colorado Springs. As we drove south on I-25 we noticed how extremely windy it was. The Sand Dunes are pretty far away though, so we figured that the weather patterns would be different in the San Luis Valley. Wrong! If anything, it was far worse! Nevertheless, we were very excited as we neared the park, even though there was a rather ominous cloud of dust visible over it from miles and miles away. As we pulled into the parking lot I made the decision to leave my expensive pro camera in the car because of the high winds and sand (sand will KILL your camera). Instead, I brought my trusty little point and shoot and, rather absurdly, my purse -- thinking if things got to be too extreme for the camera I could put it in the purse.

And so we strode out onto the dunes and were hit with gale force winds and stinging sand in our faces. It was insane! We could barely see where we were going, it was just like standing in a blizzard. I caught a glimpse of some dead wood in the sand to my left, with dunes drifting over it, and it looked like it would make a decent photo. Pat and I trudged over the dunes, sand pounding our faces, and I tried to get a shot of it. I was literally shooting blind, right into the wind and the flying sand. After a minute of this I simply turned my back to the wind and Pat followed suit. I thought maybe it would let up for a few seconds and I could quickly turn around and get my shot, so I stood there waiting. But the wind didn't stop, so I rather foolishly turned around and made a few more attempts to get some pretty pictures (the things I do for my blog!). Pat and I were getting sandblasted, it was crazy! After a few more seconds of this I turned tail and ran back to the car.

The whole thing was extremely hilarious. For one thing, I was standing in the middle of a violent sandstorm with my purse, as if I was planning on going shopping or something. Pat had the hood up on his jacket, so he looked like Obi Wan Kenobi standing in the wastelands of Tatooine (or the Unabomber, you decide). When we got back to the car I found that I had sand in my ears, stuck to my lipstick, in my hair (where it stayed all day), in my pockets, the cuffs of my jeans, and inside my shoes. Later in the day I went to Starbucks and pulled out my wallet to pay, and there was sand inside my wallet -- I checked my purse and it was full of sand too. Crazy!

We had a blast (no pun intended). We finally got to visit the Sand Dunes even though we could barely see anything! We got to explore Alamosa, a small college town nearby, as well as some of the tiny rural towns in the San Luis Valley. We visited an alligator farm (more on that later), and I got some cool photos of this and that.

The photo above was strongly manipulated in Photoshop to bring out the contrast -- the conditions made it impossible to get a decent exposure. The white area of the sky directly above the dunes is not clouds. That's flying sand. When we got home we immediately checked the weather report. It turns out the winds in the San Luis Valley were 35-40mph all day. No wonder we were getting sandblasted! (Looking on the bright side, we had the entire place to ourselves!)

More photos to come over the next few days.