More Cowboys, Burros, Uranium and Sand Dunes

We did one additional trip in Colorado before we started for home. We drove over to the other side of the Rockies to the Uncompahgre Plateau.

Tennessee pass

(Standing or sitting on the rock markers of the passes is a family tradition)

My mother was intrigued by the columbines growing wild around Telluride- the columbine is the Colorado state flower.

Columbine - Telluride

Later she would grow them in her garden.

We were someplace having lunch - I don't remember where but it might have been a bar. Colorado had silver dollar slots, and I ask my mother if I could play. So she gave me a silver dollar. I put it in and pulled the handle, and hit the jackpot. The machine spewed silver dollars all over the floor and everything. My mother wasn't happy. Her father was a gambler (he bet on the dogs) and she didn't want me to get the idea that I could get money that way. So she made me play the machine until I lost all the money. This took some time, because I would win little jackpots every so often. Slot machines are not attractive to me now.

In those days the area was fairly rural. My dad's photos showed the cowboys with their horses,

Cowboy

Horse herd

Cowboy and his dog

He also was fascinated with the genetics of breeding Palomino horses. We had not seen many of them at that time.

Palomino with a palomino foal

There were burros roaming on the roads and we came across two Jennys with a colt. We stopped and we caught the non-mother Jenny.

My donkey ride

My dad got out his movie camera and I got on the burro and my mother attempted to lead me around - without any resulting movement. the burro was not going to go anywhere. Then my sister got on

I'm not moving - even for a carrot

also without any results until my father put down his movie camera and put a loop of the rope around the burro's lip and then she would walk with my sister on her back.

After my "ride", my mother told me to hold the mother Jenny and so I put my arms around the burro's neck.

"Holding" the other donkey

When my parents finished giving my sister a ride, they let the other burro go and told me to let mine go too. But I apparently didn't hear that instruction because I retained my hold on the burro's neck. The other burro and the colt started trotting away and mine was going to join them with or without me. She dragged me across the roadside until I either let go or she kicked me off - I don't know which. I had some road rash on my tummy right through my T-shirt, but I was otherwise unscathed.

I had a more successful ride when we came across a stuffed bucking horse for a tourist photo op.

My sister getting off the stuffed horse

If you took the photo from the right angle, the post holding the horse up wasn't visible

"Riding" a bronc

Bull near Nucla

Rainbow near Nucla

I think our goal for this part of the trip was the town of Uravan - named because the ore that was mined here Carnotite ore has uranium, and vanadium in it.

Uravan (Uranium - Vanadium)

My dad had a geiger counter and since WWII, he was always looking for a possible location of uranium ore. In Uravan there was a fireplace made of the local rocks - my dad's geiger counter went into a frenzy of clicking - so fast you could not hear the individual clicks. Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase "hot rocks'.

Uravan no longer exists. The EPA declared Uravan a superfund site in the 1980s and ordered the mining company, Umetco, to start clearing away the entire town.

Next we visited the Great Sand Dunes.

Sand dunes in the distance-I'm in the foreground

The Sand Dunes are on the other side of the Rockies from Silver Cliff, but there is no direct road through the mountains. You had to either go up to Salida or down around to Gardner and around Blanca Peak.

Sand dunes against the Sangre de Cristos

Since we were already in Uravan near Nucha, we just had to come east. At the time I was told that the ocean once deposited the sand, but I know now that was not accurate. The dunes developed from sand left behind after prehistoric lakes receded and blew towards a low curve in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America (750' high at an elevation of 8,700' above sea level).

A visit to the Sand Dunes (like a visit to the Garden of the Gods and to Silver Cliff) a family tradition when we are in Colorado.

Sand dunes

My dad took my mom on their honeymoon and she said there was an electrical storm and her hair stood up straight on her head. Nothing like that happened this time.

Sand dunes with tiny people on the top

President Hoover signed a bill to make the Great Sand Dunes a National Monument in 1932, but they weren't made a National Park until 2004

Flowers growing in sand

Sliding down the dunes

My sister and I had fun sliding down the sand hills, like we did in previous years on the Cape Cod sand dunes (14 years later President Kennedy would establish the Cape Cod sand dunes as part of the Cape Cod National SeaShore)

After this we left for New Mexico