Saturday Summary - Week 26 - Six Months, Two More Parks, and a Heater That Knew When to Quit

Marcos, CO (30’s) → South Fork, CO (40’s)  → Mosca, CO (60’s) → Pueblo, CO (50’s) → Colorado Springs, CO (50’s)

Six months ago this week, we pulled out of our driveway, pointed Skuhlie toward the unknown, and started a year we'd been dreaming about for longer than we'd admit. We didn't know exactly what it would look like. We knew we wanted open roads, national parks, 70-degree days, and the particular freedom that comes from having nowhere you have to be. Six months in, we've had all of that — and a lot more we didn't see coming.

Twenty-six weeks. Nineteen national parks. Eleven states. One leaky kayak, one broken heater, and more moments of genuine awe than I know how to count. We are exactly halfway through our Adult Gap Year, and I can say without hesitation: it has been worth every mile. This week felt like a fitting way to mark it. Two more national parks. A white-knuckle mountain pass with fresh snow. A river with a complicated relationship with water. And a heater that chose this particular week to retire—which we're reading as a sign that winter is finally behind us. Here's how Week 26 unfolded.

Mesa Verde National Park: More Than We Expected

This was the park Don had been looking forward to most, and it delivered. We arrived Friday afternoon and settled into Morefield Campground on its very first day open for the season. The opening came with its opening-day kinks: our electric site had no working electricity, and we were informed that other updates were taking priority. It was in the 40s overnight, so we layered up and didn't complain. These things happen, and the setting more than made up for it.

That evening, we tackled Point Lookout Trail,  a 2-mile climb starting right from our campground with over 500 feet of elevation gain. Steep switchbacks, a solid workout, and views at the top that made it all worth it. Standing up there, we could spot the entrance road and the switchbacks we'd just driven, we could also see the snowy mountain range we’d driven to get here, or is it the way we’d have to drive out to continue our journey? 

Saturday brought a full day in the park, one of the best we've had. We started at the museum, which is currently being updated in an exciting way: new exhibits are being developed in collaboration with the Native Nations connected to this land, and the care being taken in that work was immediately evident. I've recently been reading about the evolving relationship between the National Park Service and Native Nations, and seeing it in practice at Mesa Verde was meaningful. The narrative around this park has long centered on a people who "disappeared." The museum is actively correcting that. The Ancestral Puebloans didn't vanish; they migrated. This place was one chapter in a much longer story: remarkable engineers who built extraordinary structures into the cliffs, who worked with the land, and who eventually moved on as communities do. That reframing matters, and Mesa Verde is telling it with honesty and depth.

After the museum, we unpacked the bikes, loaded Lucky into her basket, and spent the afternoon exploring the park's two main loops on two wheels. Moving through the park by bike, stopping at each overlook, feeling the elevation, taking your time,  is so much better than driving it. We had arrived about a week too early for the ranger-led cliff dwelling tours, the only way to reach the sites themselves, but viewing them from the lookout points felt right. After learning more about this place's cultural significance, there was something respectful about observing from a distance.

I ducked away mid-afternoon for the Kühl Call, our weekly Saturday family call that started during COVID and has somehow, beautifully, never stopped. Sometimes it's fifteen minutes, sometimes over an hour. Always worth it. Don continued biking the second loop while I caught up with my parents, siblings and my son from a Mesa Verde overlook. Not a bad place to take a call.

Sunday brought snow and small hail,  a proper Colorado spring reminder that winter doesn't leave quietly. We were moved to a site with working electricity (timing!) and made the very easy decision to stay warm and cozy in Skuhlie. Books, warm meals, and Lucky curled up between us. Some days, the best thing you can do is simply stay still, and we've gotten much better at that.

Crossing Wolf Creek Pass: Skuhlie Earns Her Keep

We left Mesa Verde early Monday to get Don to Pagosa Springs for his morning meetings. I spent time updating the blog and posts at a local library before we faced the day's real challenge: crossing Wolf Creek Pass through the San Juan Mountains. The pass had received 12 inches of snow the day before. We climbed from roughly 7,700 feet at Mesa Verde to about 12,700 feet at the summit, a significant ascent for our Skuhl. The road was clear, but the mountains on either side were buried in white, and Skuhlie felt every foot of that climb. She made it, as she always does, but we gave her a little extra appreciation at the top.

We landed for the night at Spruce Lodge in South Fork, a lovely RV and motel property right on the banks of the Rio Grande. The owner came out to greet us when we arrived. The campground is located right next to the Rio Grande. I keep turning this over in my mind: we are on the banks of a river that runs 1,896 miles, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It starts right here in south-central Colorado (we actually crossed its headwaters while passing through the San Juan Mountains). And yet when we camped alongside it in Albuquerque a few months ago, it was nearly dry. A trickle, surrounded by trash. Someone told me it had to do with water distribution agreements between Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. One state can literally be indebted to another for water. I've done some research since and still don't fully understand it. What I do understand is that it's complicated, important, and a little heartbreaking to see a river of that significance reduced to a stream. That's a rabbit hole I'll keep pondering. That night, our heater quit. Our faithful, much-loved heater,  the one Don's mom gifted us six years ago when we were first converting Skuhlie, the one that kept Don warm on cold evenings before this trip ever began, it gave its last warmth and called it done. We chose to see it as a sign. The cold is behind us. A new heater/AC unit we'd been eyeing might just be the next chapter.

Great Sand Dunes National Park: The Giant Forgot His Sand

We pulled into Great Sand Dunes over lunch on Tuesday, and the park's cell service (while modest) was just enough for Don to finish his workday while I got lunch together and took Lucky out to explore the campground. Staying inside the parks is always the goal, and Piñon Flats delivered: rustic, beautiful, and right at the base of something that should not logically exist. We've been listening to Leave Only Footprints by Connor Knighton on this trip, and his description of the Sand Dunes as "two slides that got stuck in a viewer" has been rolling around in our heads ever since. Two completely different landscapes, a towering sand pile and the snow-capped Sangre de Cristo Mountains,  pushed up against each other in a way that makes no visual sense and yet is completely real. Our running theory: a giant was playing with sand and simply forgot it here. We spent Tuesday evening climbing the dunes. The sand here is different from White Sands, no gypsum softness underfoot, and the scale is in a different category entirely. It’s also very different from the dunes we marveled at in Death Valley with my sister Gretel (who championed this whole adventure) top out around 100 to 130 feet. We were impressed by those. These are another thing altogether, the Star Dune in Great Sane Dunes reaches nearly 750 feet. 

Wednesday morning, I set out solo for the lookout point hike, with an audiobook playing at high volume. There are bears in this area, and my feeling is: if one is nearby, I'd just like it to know I'm there too. The view from the top was worth the uphill and the bear awareness. I fell into conversation with a couple from Colorado Springs, and we watched the tiny figures moving across the dunes below together. Ants. We were those ants yesterday. How quickly perspective shifts. The Colorado Springs couple also mentioned something that went straight onto the "next time" list: the Ute Nation has a conservation area near Mesa Verde that offers interpretive tours. That is very much Don's kind of thing, and we filed it away immediately. It turns out that everyone who travels long enough develops a "next time" list. Ours is growing nicely. Coming down the trail, a winter weather alert arrived on my phone. The pass ahead was expecting heavy snow overnight.

Pueblo & Colorado Springs, CO

We made the call to cross early, and treated ourselves to a hotel night in Pueblo, a decision the rain enthusiastically validated all evening. Thai food via Uber Eats, a large bed, and a TV. We closed the week in Colorado Springs at a Harvest Host brewery; a cold but manageable night, a beer flight, and Lucky doing what Lucky does best: collecting attention from everyone within reach.

Week 26 Takeaway

Six months in, and this is what I know: we made the right call. Not every week is easy. This one had frozen campsites, a broken heater, a mountain pass that required more faith in Skuhlie than we felt entirely comfortable, and weather that reminded us repeatedly that Colorado does not consider May to be summer. And yet, Mesa Verde moved us, the Sand Dunes astonished us, the Rio Grande gave us something to think about, and we ended the week warm and fed and exactly where we wanted to be.

Halfway through our Adult Gap Year. Excited to see what is still ahead.