Forty Pounds of Wet Corn: Colorado day nine

And where did we leave our intrepid travelers in our last installment? Why, we left them in Aurora, with everybody pissed off for different reasons! What fun!

Derek spent the night before predominantly in the garage, because I told him to sleep in the car. Whether or not he was actually trying to do what I asked him because he knew how angry I was, or if he was being petulant with a side of deeply embarrassed, because he knew I went into the house and told my dad and Caryn what he had said to me. The world and I may never know. But we had to get the car packed up and head out on the road, because this was a busy busy BUSY day. 

Derek got the car packed up, which took a lot of spatial reasoning (something my husband is VERY good at), and several hours of alone time, which I think suited everyone and Derek just fine. Once Derek got the car packed up, we somberly headed out for our first stop: Colorado Springs, so everyone could eat. We stopped at Urban Egg, which used to be Over Easy. I had been introduced to Urban Egg nee Over Easy by a fellow I was dating named Andreas, though I called him The Swede, and back in the day, I fucking LOVED it there. They had an amazing lavender lemonade, and a pancake flight that was to die for. But that was twelve or so years ago. As a person who spends years craving a taste and the overall experience of a great restaurant, I always always ALWAYS leap at the chance to go somewhere I loved once upon a time. as th saying goes, you can't go home again, but like...if it's open, I CAN go to Over Easy/Urban Egg again. So we went. 

And that was a mistake. Everybody was very lukewarm on the food. Derek was annoyed at the size of the meals. I was annoyed that if I wanted to eat, it would have cost me 14 dollars for two fucking eggs, some cheese, and avocado slices. So I had nothing but a sour time. I needed something to eat, I didn't feel like going to Sprouts or Trader Joe's, so I chose the food I had been wanting the previous day but didn't get to have: Little Nepal.

I was so excited to have Little Nepal, it was a bright spot in what had been a fairly shitty 24 hours thus far. A shitty 24 hours in which I was very hungry, as I hadn't really eaten. So naturally I sent a picture to Stevie saying I had demanded to go there for lunch. And she was ANGRY at me for it. Angry. Now, we had made a plan to go eat Little Nepal together the day I saw her while Derek, my dad, and Caryn went to Tava. My dad wanted us all to eat lunch as a family, since we were all on vacation together, so I told Stevie our plans had changed, and she responded with "YOUR FAMILY FUCKING SUCKS" and "I haven't seen you in person for six years" and very typical Stevie-centric nonsense. It's all well and good that we hadn't seen each other in a long time, and it sucks when you don't get to see your friends, but I was there on vacation with my family. I wasn't even going to initially tell her I was there, because I didn't have room in my schedule to see her and I had a sneaking suspicion she would not take that well. She messaged me something like, "I can't believe you're going there without me" to which I replied, "I was hungry, they have food I can eat, and I wanted Little Nepal". All things that are true. I am vegan, I am keto, and that combination of dietary needs makes my list of places I can eat VERY slim. Little Nepal fits the bill with food I can have. Additionally, I wanted Little Nepal. Stevie sent me a voice message a little bit after I responded, but as we were on our way to our second destination, and that put us in the middle of fucking nowhere, I was unable to listen to it. I couldn't have guessed what she was saying, but I had previously told her that I would be traveling to Durango, and I would be out of reception signal for days because we were in the mountains and would be driving, and that I would let her know when I got back. So I assumed all would be fine without me listening to the message or telling her I couldn't get access to it. I was with my family. That part I had ALSO let her know...again...before she dropped me off. I did not try to listen to it again, because I had other shit going on in my life, and she was not my priority. We'll put Stevie on the backburner for now, though sh will rear her self-centered head again in a few days. 

At Little Nepal, I got my staples: saag paneer, the veggie pakora sampler, and gajar ka halwa. They. Were. EVERYTHING that I remembered them being. Earlier, when I talked about chasing the taste of Urban Egg/Over Easy and being disappointed, and that being a trend with restaurants that Derek and I share with each other from our pre-each other times (I may not have explicitly said that, but it is true. Each of us have had excited restaurant shares, and then one of us is disappointed while boh of us are underwhelmed), Little Nepal deviated from the mean in a major way. I ended up eating there two more times before we left. 

We were officially on our way to our next stop, the first official destination on our Durango leg of the trip: Bishop's Castle. Derek and I had never been, and we had decided this would be a stop when the kids were still coming along, but my dad thought it sounded great, so we made it a stop for us even after it was clear the kids weren't coming with. It was an absolutely GORGEOUS drive.

Blue sky, clear day, and though tensions were still kind of high in the car, conversation had been pleasant enough. Derek was trying to ease into acting like nothing had happened when we WERE speaking to each other, but we were mostly not really speaking. Which suited everybody just fine, I think. There were a few conversations in the car, but it was mostly pretty quiet. Not necessarily an unpleasant or tense quiet, it was just quiet. Ready for an onslaught of photos from Bishop's Castle with minimal commentary? I fucking hope so, because that's what you're getting!

A fair warning at the entrance, though in the interest of full disclosure, I went in via the side route. 

The side route:

This is not a jungle gym. Just so you know. And I will tell you, as a person who has experienced Bishop's Castle that even if it WERE a jungle gym, I would not fucking partake. Because as cool as it is that this is hand built, this hand built mother fucker is RICKETY. And the higher up you go, the more keenly aware you are that someone hand built this, and it is not beholden to any OSHA codes. Everything is at your own risk. 

OSHA BE DAMNED. 

The entire aesthetic is fairly charming, though. It has that hand hewn "Don't Tread on Me" look and feel that says "fuck the government" while still being inviting. A look and feel that I lack, as I am not even close to inviting, but am very much of the "fuck the government" frame of mind. 

Live materials! Ladders! Dust! Rocks! So much stuff in an unfinished room!

I didn't get a photo, but there is a little room on the right hand side of this space where there's a few fold out chairs and a TV playing old interviews from the 70s of the builders. Which felt amusingly cult-y to me, but I can also see wanting to educate visitors of the process. 

Now THIS made me laugh, very audibly, despite the fact that I was in an underneath bad mood:

In case you couldn't read it from far away:

Did Willard build this mother fucking staircase or this motherfucking castle? THE FUCK HE DID, JIM BUILT ALL OF IT, WILLARD ONLY BUILT THIS BULLSHIT ROUND PART. You know. To set the record straight. In case you thought Willard built other stuff, it was Jim, you fucking MORONS. 

Good job, Willard. Your staircase round part is very nice. 

Tth second floor:

Now...what happens to these placques if someone says no? Do they stay there forever, a memorial to their inability to properly judge the temperature of their relationship? There was a piece of graffiti at Rainbow Falls in the springs that my friend Ian and I saw that said, "Marissa, will you go to prom with me?" and there was a tagged response that said, "NO, BITCH!" underneath it. Ian and I laughed about it all the fucking time, and we always hoped that it was Marissa that responded in graffiti. A shrine forever to boldness and extreme disinterest. 

A lot of these stained glass windows were purchased as memorials. Some of them were weird. One of them was Betty Boop with angel wings. 

More construction! Joy! It's everywhere in this piece!

The stairs o the third floor. 

I was gleefully unprepared for the goats. My step mom got a photo of one of the goats in my lap trying to eat my keffiyah, but I can't find it. I'll have to ask her to resend it to me. 

The third floor was so expansive. This would be such a gorgeous place to get married. Imagine the photos!

The pane glass wal that opens to one of the many outside walkways, like this one: 

Again, in the interest of transparency: I fucking chickened the entire way out after walking on this balcony walkway. It was so rickety and flimsy and my vagina was in full on fucking clenched mode. I usually try and tough shit out, push myself through my discomfort to get to the views I want, with mixed results, but I just couldn't here. I felt very unsafe. Derek went up MUCH further than I did, and I asked him to send me photos, but I don't think he made it all the way to one of the observatory balls. I will post his photos after I get through all of mine.

I admired how Caryn and my dad seemed unbothered by the all around hand built feel of the balcony. 

This was about halfway up the stairwell I was climbing to get to the next level, and I peeked out the window at about the place where there stopped being a handrail and you had to trust the physics of the stairs. I was unwilling to trust the physics, so I went back down. 

I sat down on a bench in front of this room, and there was a family that sat down at about the same time I did. A person who I assume was the grandfather, a tiny human I am assuming identifies as a girl about age 7, and a person I am assuming is the tiny human's father. Now, the tiny human had the CUTEST little outfit on, and had adorable space buns as their hairdo, and I heard them talking to their dad, but I couldn't hear them, I could only hear dad say, "I told you that you can't sit on the bench". I turned around and said, "oh, you now what, it's ok, I can get up and leave, they are welcome to sit here!" and the dad says to me, "no, they want to sit with you on the bench" and I said, "awww, well I understand if you would rather that not happen, but she is welcome to sit next to me, as well!" and the dad said no, and I was like, "I totally understand, I have kids, too." Because I don't know that I would just...let my kids sit down with a stranger. So I turned back around and chastised myself for not just minding my own business and saying that I would move. I know it would annoy me if I told my kids no in public and some well intentioned person unintentionally undermined my no by trying to be kind. I shouldn't have said anything. And then I heard the dad say something else that I couldn't distinguish, and the tiny human responded with, "but daddy. I look pretty. And she looks pretty. And I want her pretty to sit with my pretty." And I turned around again asked the tiny human, "were you talking about me??" and the tiny little human nodded and I was like, "that is the sweetest thing, thank you so much for saying that about me!" and the tiny human nodded very gravely and then smiled super huge at me. What an absolute little sweetie. It made my fucking day. Later on, after they left, I saw the tiny human one more time and I got the biggest happy wave from them. They were in a picture I took of the goats wandering the property, but I deleted it. 

This is the view from the gate that I should have passed through. I love the spire. I kept thinking about all of the photoshoots that would look gorgeous here. Especially with our wings. 

THE DIAGNOSIS IS IN, Y'ALL. 

Alright, here are Derek's photos from the levels of Bishop's Castle that me and my fraidy cat vagina couldn't make it to:

I CAN FEEL MYSELF CLENCHING AGAIN. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHH. 

Once we all regrouped at the entrance, we headed off to our next destination, and my personal highlight for the day. Great Sand Dunes. 

It was about a two hour drive, and on the way, the conversaion veered toward my dad's recent interactions with his sister Renee, who is, as all great historians will report, a huge bitch. There had been a recent...uh...altercation with my aunt? She went over to my dad's and talked out of the side of her ass about my bestie, then followed it up with blaming me for making my bestie queer, and making my bestie's kid queer, and all of my activism is poisoning people and she just talked shit about me enough that my step mom had to leave because it was making her so angry. My dad told me he defended me a little bit, but I was aggravated that he was so just like...blithe about it in his retelling. He was more concerned about Renee finding out I knew what she said about me. And that turned into a thing in the car because Derek got irrationally angry about my dad not dfending me. He started yelling at my dad, and Caryn told him he needed to shut the fuck up (and rightfully so, he was way out of line), and when Derek said that he was just so fucking angry at the idea of someone saying things like that about his kids, I reminded him that he called me a fucking r****d not 24 hours prior, and he says shitty things about my kids all the fucking time and feels justified to do so. And that was the end of that conversation, and it just made the tension even more palpable amongst us. 

We drove in relative silence the rest of the way to Great Sand Dunes (a place with many different names to many different ribes who hold the place as sacred. This is a great primer on it that gives the Ute name So wap a wot to the dunes, as well as sharing a few other tribal names for them. Fast read and informative, I recommend it). It was uncomfortable. 

We drove by this really gorgeous lake on the way through to the dunes. 

I was still feeling very upset, and my dad and Caryn must have been, too, because conversation was stagnant.

But like...I can't lie, the second we got within eyeline of Huajatolla (the proper Ute name for what everyone calls The Spanish Peaks. I found a few different spellings of it. Wahatoya and Guajatoyah, all along the same pronunciation vein. Part of what is taking me so long to write these is all of the research I'm doing to give things their correct names, and I know I'm not doing the best job, but I AM trying my hardest. Let me know if I've missed anything or gotten something wrong, please!), I kind of forgot how angry I was at Derek and I was giddy about where we were heading. 

COME ON. This is the most amazing, beautiful, fantastic place, and every time I come here I am overwhelmed like it's my first time seeing anywhere on Earth.

What am I even doing with my life that I don't get to see this all the time? What is life even worth without this. 

I got out here to try and take a photo, but I'm sure it sucked. I have not yet looked at my actual camera photos, I'm too afraid of how shit everything will be. 

I was so fucking excited to get back to the dunes! The last time I went, I didn't get to climb to the top and take new photos, because SOMEONE had a massive hole in their jeans after their gigantic, zaftig ass split their pants at the abandoned factory we went to earlier in the day. That someone was me. The sand was literally blasting my skin, so I stayed behind, and I've been regretting it for years. I should have just allowed my skin to get worn away aggressively by mechanical erosion. I could use less ass, anyway. 

We had planned to go to Cuckoo's for dinner when we got to Durango, so I actually had VERY limited time to explore, and you just...you fucking forget how absolutely massive the park is. The walk from the parking lot to the river isn't very long, but the river is wide, and travelling across it takes a bit of time. And then the sand before you even get to the dunes is also huge. 

I think I had walked...maybe a mile? And I was almost to the base, but not close enough, and I knew we needed to go. So I turned around and walked back to the car. 

I am having a hard time finding the indigenous name for what we call Medano Creek. I took a picture of the sign hoping it would have something on it. 

I have taken a version of this photo every time I come to the park. It's like a ritual now. 

Goodbye, dunes!!! Until we meet again!

There was a heaviness to the sky that said it might storm, but it might also just be a gorgeous late afternoon. Turned out it was just a gorgeous late afternoon.

We didn't have time to get to Durango for food, so we ended up agreeing on stopping in Pagosa Springs for dinner, hoping to also find a store I could stop in to get myself some food. 

It was a lovely drive. The light was absolutely sumptuous. Almost enough to make me forget that we were dealing with some seriously rotten vibes in the car, and there wasn't a drop of clear air to be found amongst us. 

The place we stopped at for dinner was called Boss Hog's, and I stayed in the car because I wanted to eat my snackies. It has been reported to me that the dinner was, in fact, repugnant and nobody ever wanted to set foot inside of Boss Hog's ever again. 

We did find a walmart for me to stop at and pick up a couple things for myself to make dinner, but I had to be fast, as we still had about an hour and a half to drive to our place in PURGATORY.

Terrible photo, I got a better one the next day, but wih that, we were insde our next place, I cooked myself some food, and we went to bed. We were all EXHAUSTED. Next on the docket was tooling around Durango and Silverton. These ttravel blogs take me for fucking EVER.