Colorado Trip Part 2. Sort of.

I started telling you of our little Colorado adventure in the middle. I don’t know why. That is how my brain works. Haphazardly.

On our way through NM to Colorado, we stopped at Capulin Volcano National Monument.



It’s kinda the first major elevation change we come too. We stopped there 4 years ago on our first trip and took this photo.



This is the one we took this time.



I think maybe we’ve all gotten a little bigger, even those of us who really shouldn’t have gotten any bigger…

Capulin is a nice stop over.



It’s a good place to have a picnic on your travels up to CO. There are some truly amazing vistas from up there.






My advice is to stop before you hit the Rockies and not after. Capulin is very impressive when you are coming up from flat ol’ Texas but after leaving the Rockies…well, notsomuch!

We stayed at an RV park near The Great Sand Dunes National Park. That was our first camping spot in CO. We’ve been there before, so we didn’t spend a great deal of time on the dunes, but the kids went and had a blast. Even the big kids.







This is my two boys and a cousin (sort of, he’s my sister in law’s sisters boy, but we call him cousin. TMI? Sorry.) running down the dunes.

That’s the thing I love about The Dunes. They really are fun for everyone.



Because we’d already been to the Dunes, we didn’t stay long. When everyone was done on The Dunes, we drove to The Colorado Gator Farm. It was something to behold. Think traveling sideshow.





(Annika got a certificate for holding the gator, that the gator bit and left teeth marks in as his official seal. She thought that was pretty darn cool.)

There were gators EVERYWHERE!




I suspect this is the place they send injured gators or gators that have been found and cannot be released back into the wild for whatever reason. I’m not sure I’d go back, it was a little odd, but it was fun doing it once. You can even pay to wrestle a gator if you are so inclined. We were not so inclined. Definitely a fun one-time stop.

Oddly enough, this was my birthday, so I got to spend my birthday at the Great Sand Dunes and the Colorado Gator Farm. Not many people can say that, I suspect.



(The kids realized we didn't have any candles in the RV so they improvised with twisty ties and toothpicks. Pretty resourceful, I'd say!)