After we left Mesa Verde NP, we made a quick stop in Durango. It's another "gotta see" historic little town in Colorado. We walked around downtown, stopped in at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Starbucks, then checked out the train station.
The Durango & Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad is pretty cool. It was built in 1881 to carry gold and silver from the San Juan mountains, but quickly started carrying passengers that wanted to see the beautiful landscapes. It has been in operation for over 125 years.One of the most famous events surrounding this train is the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. Every May, cyclists from around the world race the train from Durango (6500') to Silverton (9300'). The route is 47 miles long and gains 5700' elevation over Coal Bank Pass (10,660') and Molas Divide (10,900'). This is a very tough race, not just because of the high altitude, but because it's usually snowing at the top of the pass. Only the tough survive this event.
We continued to drive east, eventually arriving at the Great Sand Dunes NP. The views were incredible as we drove into the park with the evening sun. The road to get to the park entrance is about 12 miles long, and from that far away the dunes look so tiny at the base of the mountains.
As we got closer we started to realize how big they actually are. One is over 700' tall.
We parked the car and walked out onto these massive dunes. 
It was fun hiking up the behemoths and getting sand in our shoes. We tried riding down in a plastic sled someone had left, but it looks like they left it for a good reason - it didn't work!We set up our tent and walked over to the ranger-led show where a man was playing a guitar and singing a sand dunes song to the tune of Home on the Range. It was pretty funny. During the next presentation on birds in the park, I managed to drop my beer bottle on the ground where it shatter into a million tiny pieces. Everyone boo'd me.
We put our food in the bear locker and crawled into the tent. The bear locker is a huge metal box with a special latch on it to prevent animals without opposable thumbs from getting in. We were joking that around 3am we'd be hearing a "bang...bang...bang" in the middle of the night as a bear was trying to get into our bear locker. Ha!
In the morning, Steve told me he didn't sleep very well. When I asked why, he said "I think there was something outside our tent last night. I heard something walk very slowly past our tent, then over to the next campsite, and then it was banging the door on their bear locker". I said "You've got to be kidding. There is no way there was a bear in our campsite last night. It was probably a cougar". He replied by saying "I was awake for an hour last night worried that a bear was going to rip our tent to shreds. I was coming up with all kinds of ways to fight it off."
We got out of the tent and checked all around for pawprints. There were tracks right where he said this thing was. But they were far from bear tracks with the one big pad in the center, the 5 tiny pads in the middle, and matching claws at the top. It was more like a giant "V" shape, which is a hoof print, most likely from a deer or elk. I started laughing so hard. Steve lost sleep over a deer! Then he said "Maybe there was a bear riding on the back of a deer, directing it where to go". He he, I am still laughing at that one.
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