1993/07 Rockies trip - Great Sand Dunes |
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Wednesday July 14th
It was still hot, so it was an early start again to avoid problems climbing the San Juan mountains out of Durango.
Around lunch time, we were thrashing our way up the 8 miles of Wolf Creek pass, 25 mph in bottom gear, as usual, when the speedometer gave up on us. As well as confusing us, this also confuses the truck's computer, as it thinks the engine is consuming vast quantities of fuel without actually moving. So, we stopped at Monte Vista, which is a much uglier little town that it sounds, to see a Chevy dealer again.
We had lunch at a tacky coffee shop in the town's biggest hotel, and then handed the truck over. The dealer really went out of his way to help us, with the service manager doing a lot of the work himself, but all of the linkage seemed to be working except for the cruise control and that isn't a standard GM part, so all he could suggest was to get it fixed at home. So we drove off without a speedo to the 
Great Sand Dunes national monument, and squeezed into the last usable slot in the campground.
We realized that we had been scammed by Rosedale Chevrolet. We'd had the truck built to order, but they had "forgotten" to order the cruise control so they retrofitted it when the truck arrived. Only they had not fitted the $300 Chevrolet part and instead used an after-market $100 unit. Which explained why it never worked properly in the mountains. It worked OK on the flat in Minnesota but It would not change down to a lower gear automatically when climbing mountains.
If the driver didn't change down the truck would just stop.
The Great Sand Dunes are 700ft high (higher than Brighton's Ditchling Beacon), piled up against the Sangre de Cristo mountains by the "incessant southwest wind". This time, the wind was blowing the sand hard in our faces so we didn't do much dune climbing, just a little paddling in Medano Creek, which runs through the park, about a 100 yards wide and an inch or so deep.
Long ago the San Luis valley was occupied by a large lake. The water came from streams in the surrounding mountains. Erosion brought vast quantities of sand into the lake. Eventually the lake level overtopped its lowest bank and much of the water flowed away into the Rio Grande. This left the sand exposed and over thousands of years the sand was piled up against the Sangre de 
Cristo mountains.
Thursday July 15th
Early next morning, the wind had dropped, so I was off before dawn to take some pictures as the sun came up over the mountains. I 
think I got some good pictures, but I had a lot of waiting to do. I got up too early.