Sunset at the OLT Hot Springs

At the Orient Land Trust Hot Springs on our second night, we headed up to the Top Ponds to watch the sunset. Although, when you combine freezing temperatures with the slanting of an orange sun over steaming hot springs - well,as you can see, it kind of turns into a brilliant, billowing, enveloping haze. 

Not that I'm complaining.

Because the walk to the top ponds is a bit over 1/4 mile on an icy slope, we headed towards more level ponds before losing all of the light. And of course we were treated to another dimming of the day in true Colorado splendor as we raced our rapidly freezing clothes to a warmer destination. We spent the rest of the night watching the scimitar moon sail over head and getting pruny in our natural bath.

In the morning we head to sandier reaches, the Great Sand Dunes National Park!

OMG! OLT Hot Springs

 

As soon as we escaped from the freezing air into the steamy hot spring, we began scheming on how we could stay here forever. We began listing people who needed to drop everything and come here right now. Imagine this: a thermal paradise at 9,000 feet elevation, perched against the piercing Sangre De Cristo Mountains lording over valley below and the distant San Juans. Yup, such is life in the Valley View Hot Springs at the Orient Land Trust in south central Colorado!

Wait, back up! First, our mad dash from Denver, tired from nights bent over arcade games and schmoozing at speakeasies, in the sudden onset snow storm, of course. The challenges of a winter road trip keep unfolding like an onion - and so do the perks!

Like a blizzard through Bighorn Canyon flecked with its namesake sheep spewing us into the San Luis Valley as the sun breaks through the clouds to greet us. We maneuver the car to a hasty stop to soak it all in. Somewhere, 60 miles along the chasm awaits our destination - and a private cabin booked for two nights! - but as we stand between the veils of two monstrous ranges being impaled with frozen wind, we don't quite know what to expect at this proclaimed "naturist community".

So headfirst into the snow we went, the setting sun throwing us into the shade of the squall before we took a left turn up into the mountains, dreaming of raising our core temps above freezing. Before long we had climbed up above the weather and were stopped at a boom gate next to the check in building. We find our cabin with just enough time to take in the beautiful sunset. This place already feels close enough to heaven and we haven't even seen any of the pools yet!

Okay, okay, no need to hold you in suspense. We quickly stripped (naturism here means "clothing optional", if you catch my drift), bundled our nakedness up in something that passed for pool cover and skipped into the steaming night with excitement. Although the short walk through the 0 degree temperatures was a bit rough, we eagerly entered the sauna (which had a spring inside!) before racing off to the pools.

For the next 36 hours, we soaked in the myriad pools throughout the area like happy, plump chia seeds. From the cascading "top ponds", to the breathtaking views at the "meadow pond", and of course the very impressive heated swimming pool, we basked in the steamy glow of 96 degree water in ten degree days! Pure bliss.

Have you soaked it all in?!

Honey, I'm Home!

After 50 straight hours of driving - I'm HOME! The astute among us may realize that the photo above is of our departure, not of our arrival, but I'm sure none of you would be interested in seeing my haggard, tear-streaked face crowded by a tangle of limp, oily hair that hadn't been washed since Sacramento, California. And yes, I said tear-streaked, because even the most intrepid travelers are entitled an emotional breakdown every now and then, especially when that breakdown coincides with a very intense daybreak dash through snow, ice, and windshield wiper fluid that froze solid. And, of course, the overwhelming relief of finally being off the road!

Looking at my recent post history, you might be remonstrating me from my lack of posts about my trip - the posts I promised you would cover my journey on a live basis - but I guess that just wasn't in the cards this time around. I blame technology failures and horrible time management. Had I a lesser constitution for remoteness, I may have lapsed into catatonic schizophrenia with the amount of time I spent in areas with no service at all. Have no fear, I will recap the adventures like a champ in the weeks to come.

Some adventures to whet your taste buds:

• Completed my life goal of visiting all 50 states!
• Hung out at a nudist colony in Colorado
• Attended a PhD level astrophysics course at UC Riverside
• Saw a wild sea otter up close and personal
• Cross-country skied to a back country yurt for the night

I can't wait to tell you all about it. Expect an abundance of sunset photos. What have you all been up to?

Rock City, Kansas

File this one under awesome roadside attractions! 

After spending the previous day exploring the prairie by foot, we were ready to cover some miles in our car, but first we just had to check out nearby Rock City Park in Minneapolis, Kansas. Touted more as a roadside attraction than a geologic park, we were delightfully surprised to find that it was actually more like a roadside playground! This was particularly exciting because it being the middle of winter on a Wednesday, we were the only ones there.

So on the two acre spread overlooking patchwork fields of ranch land and winter wheat, we began climbing all over the 200 round sandstone concretions, formed by calcite from Kansas' prehistoric inland sea and differential erosion, that littered the park. And yes, it was just as cool as the pictures make it look! All around us were rock formations, varying from 3 feet high to 12 feet high and easily climable. In fact, the park encourages climbing!

We spent about an hour exploring and climbing until it was time to hit the road with our sights sent on Colorado. It may seem crazy to say, but if you are ever in the area, I highly suggest stopping by the park for some geology-themed excitement.

(Ps, I may be writing this to you in Tucson, Arizona after a million adventures, but my heart is still in Kansas!)

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

"You must not be in the prairie; but the prairie must be in you... He who tells the prairie mystery must wear the prairie in his heart." William A. Quayle, The Prairie and the Sea (1905)

Some of my most favorite times have been in Kansas, and that is not because my excitement about arriving colored it in anyway - but because it was totally awesome! Kansas gets a bad reputation from pretty much everyone. The only things I hear about the sunflower state is that it is flat, monotonous, boring, or something about the Wizard of Oz. I rarely hear anybody praising grasses singing in the wind or the overwhelming feelings of isolation you can get standing under a sky with no end and how those feelings are like nothing else in the world.

Good thing I am here to tell you about those things!
   

Driving through Kansas caused quite a spiritual stir in us - every mile we exalted the Lord above: Oh, my God. The plains they never ended. From careful rows of corn and sunflower stubble, to gently undulating ranch land, to the vast scorched earth of the Tallgrass Prairie National Park and Preserve, as far as the eye could see was as far as the eye could see.

We made a beeline to the Tallgrass Prairie in the Flint Hills, first and foremost, on a very chilly yet calm day. Bundled in our hiking layers and eager to stretch our legs after three days on the road, we set off on a seven mile hike through the winter worlds of some of the last tallgrass prairie in America. The natural prairie remaining here is only 4% of the original 170 million acres that didn't fall under cultivation or development just within the last generation. Wow.
   

And what should appear on the horizon less than a mile in? A herd of bison, plodding staidly along like a glimpse back in time. The majority of the prairie we walked through had recently undergone a controlled burn, so we didn't really get a good idea of what it would have been like to be standing under prairie grasses upwards of eight feet high, but we did get an amazing sense of isolation - with the winds at an atypical hush, the silence of the winter prairie was nearly deafening with not a tree, house, or power line to break the line of sight.

Watch out for the occasional bison poop!

"Native tallgrass prairie is the rarest of all North American biomes... [It] is a singular system defined by climate, weather, size, and the interactions of fire and grazing bison. Because those factors are no longer functioning in a balanced whole anywhere in North America, true tallgrass prairie can be considered to be extinct as a natural functioning ecosystem." John Madson, On the Osage (1990)

With our legs aching and the sun setting in the overcast sky, we headed into nearby Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, to soak up a little history. I am in the middle of reading William Least Heat Moon's PrairyErth, which covered Cottonwood Falls and Chase County in the first chapters, so I was thrilled to see the quiet little town through the eyes of the author, including the Emma Chase Cafe and the Cottonwood Falls infamous red roofed courthouse.

But like most prairie towns on a Tuesday in the middle of winter not much was open and as I sometimes do when I stand next to my Subaru with Vermont plates pointing my camera about, I began to feel more like a voyeur than a well meaning tourist. We hit the road towards our accommodations for the night in Salina, watching the sunset on oil derricks down on the prairie.