the grand tour, day 2

so after going through hoosier pass,  we made our way to the one authentic ghost town i just had to see, st elmo. it was way up a dead end valley, hardly passed anybody other than a couple of rangers and a couple of campers. didnt know if the road was gonna be snowed in or not but we made it up to the top and past all the herds of bighorn sheep crowding the road to find the old mining town completely deserted except one fellow working on some property. the place has only 5 full time residents. very cool, my ghosttown cravings were completely satisfied.

after backtracking back out of that alpine valley, we came down gently into the san luis valley, where eventually we got to a point where you could see 85 miles east to west with mtns on either side, and the valley ranged north to south 300 miles or so down into new mexico. forget about the sequatchie valley, this place was immense. you could watch car headlights come at you from 60 miles on, flattest land i've ever seen. a huge valley of NOTHING...literally. settlements are far between and there is nothing other than tumble weeds growing there. the van started acting funny, so we jammed it on down the highway forever and ever until we finally came to a town(sorta), opening the back of the van to find his alternator had broken a bolt and wiggled out the other 2. the damn thing was just sitting out free on a ledge, its a wonder it didnt fall out the back. even the belt was still there, although he had a spare. so after walking to one freaky compound with hardware, tires and lumber painted on the side, the ass who ran the place proceeded to way overcharge us for the wrong bolt, while failing to tell us the general store across the street sold bolts without the 300% markup. no wonder the fool does his business behind a locked gate with a tiny hole for transactions. i tell ya, folks sure werent friendly out there.

so jeff gets her up and running and we plugged rv park into his iphone and found a sweet campground with hotsprings swimming & soaking pools. unfortunately in our drive towards the only town we could see, we had gone 40-50 miles out of our route, so back across the big nothing we trucked. the soak in the hot springs was so worth it though, melting away all our altitude sickness and lingering hangovers. such a cool place, and i swear, the nicest people we met out in the sticks the whole time. little place called sand dunes swimming pool and rv park. really great place, about 7 miles north and 20 miles west of great sand dune national park in the middle of freaking nowhere. killer place to stay. i'd recommend the hell out of the joint... http://www.sanddunespool.com/

it was so nice to be warm again when we hit the high plains desert, but it wouldnt last. after a tasty steak dinner whooped up by jeff, and many more drinks, madness and yelling into the night we crawled back in the van, and proceeded to freeze again the whole night, with windgusts over 40mph, if not way higher. it got well below freezing, for when i got up at crack of dawn, AGAIN, my swimtrunks were frozen stiff as a board. i had to dip them in the hot springs before going into the changing room haha. but the springs soon had me up and at running speed in no time. so after coffee and a dip we headed out to see the mighty dunes, more on that later...