It's time to bid Adieu to Albuquerque, New Mexico and move on to our next stop - Colorado. We travelled north, skirted the city of Santa Fe, travelling further Eastward. The mountain road was topsy turvy, with a gradual ascent all the way towards higher elevation as we entered inside the state of Colorado.
The dusty, desert landscape slowly turned into bluish green as the snow capped mountain far away looked like a mass congregation of the white cap wearing Congress disciples of Mahatma Gandhi or a massive Marathi Siv Sena rally in Nasik wearing traditional white caps. The local population looked as white as the snow sparkling above the Sangre De Cristo mountains embracing the town of Alamosa. The long range of sinusoidal peaks looked like wearing a string of pearls made from ornamental snow.
No sooner we entered the outskirts of the city of Alamosa, Colorado than we saw soft snow scattered on ground. It was a cool cold 41 degrees at 3 PM local time. So far during our travel we used AC in our Potel room (so many motels in US are owned by Patel that we can call them Potels). In Colorado we used heating. What a contrast to Georgia which is now sizzling in 90 plus heat.
One other thing I noticed - the price of regular unleaded gasoline topped $3 per gallon, 50 cents more than Georgia. Today I was a first timer many ways. For the first time I stepped into the State of Colorado - the 44th state I visited in the United States. It was also the first time I stepped on snow on the ground as we are stepping into the month of June. Never experienced snow so late in season.
We visited a Gator Park housing variety of Alligators and its cousin Crocodile. Never thought I will see Alligators in Colorado. They state has varieties of
of flora and fauna - both native and captive. The icing on the cake was our trip to the Sand Dunes National park. Right on the bottom of snow capped mountain lies miles of mounds of golden, tiny sands carved out of rocks, drifted by wind over thousands of years forming crescent shaped giant dunes, one layer cascaded over the other.
There were varieties of Cacti and thorny desert shrubs surrounding the narrow trail leading to the dunes, separated by a gurgling fast flowing, but ankle deep stream. Our feet could feel the cold pinch of the snow melted water as we waded though to reach the sand dunes.
We could literally see snow melting from the surrounding mountain top, trickling down and forming mini streams of natural freshwater eventually feeding into the Rio Grande river - the lifeline of the desert southwest.
Puri PANDAs (priests of Jagannath Temple, Puri) would have made full utilization of such pristine sand dunes. The pot bellied Panda is known to take pride in relieving his bowels on sand. SUJI MARKA BALI UPARE KHAJA MARKA JHADA (Delivering Cigar shaped Shit on Flour fine Sands) is the ultimate fantasy of a PANDA from Puri, who after taking a dump is rumored to take a second look at his produce - the bigger the quantity, the greater is his satisfaction.
We attended an half an hour talk given by an eminent Geologist from Smithsonian Institute at the Sand Dunes National Park Visitor's Center. It was a learning experience has he presented many trivias. It was interesting to know that Mars in addition to earth is known to possess giant sand dunes. It was quite flattering when he liked my question about atmospheric composition of Mars - A cool 95% of which consists of Carbon Dioxide gas. In the entire Solar system, Titan, the moon of Saturn is the only object apart from earth which contains a substantial amount of Nitrogen gas.
After a long day, it was going to be a long drive of 1500 miles back to Georgia. We planned on doing it @500 miles a day, taking multiple halts as we jump from one state to another before reaching our destination. Somewhere in North-Eastern Texas prior to entering Oklahoma on state Highway 520 East I was stopped by a State Trooper.
As I pulled over seeing the flashing lights behind me, the Cop greeted me through my passenger side window in a heavy Texan accent - "Good Afternoon Sir, I am sorry but you were speeding in a 45 miles per hour zone". I replied - "My apology. We are coming from Colorado. As the speed limit suddenly changed from 75 to 65, then to 55 and 45, all within a distance of 1 mile, I might be speeding a little bit, being unfamiliar to the area". "I see, you are long way from home" - the Cop said looking at my Georgia Driver's license. He let me go with a warning, without a fine.
My encounter with snakes in this trip didn't end. I saw a yellow snake passing through the road right in front of me. I swerved a bit to let it go. This happened on a State Highway, barely half an hour after I was stopped by the Cop. This trip has been eventful for me. It marks the end of my travelogue until the next one. Till then...
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