Dunes of Indiana

Cowles Bog

Beaver lodges and pond

Sand ridges

After almost 300 miles of Midwest farmland, Indiana Dunes National Park did not have to offer much elevation to break up my homeward drive. 

I needed to get away from turnpikes and interstates. These dunes were necessary in a year of travel already dominated by dunes. 

Visitor center mural

There was some controversy about the shift from a national recreation area to national park. There are national lakeshores along Michigan and Wisconsin’s coastlines, but the biological diversity of the Indiana Dunes separates it from the pack, even if there is a steel mill between the two sections. What I saw of the dunes convinced me completely that it deserves the designation. 

These are different dunes than the ones protected by Great Sand Dunes or White Sands national parks. Wind the shapes all dunes, but the Indiana Dunes formed from millennia of natural sculpting. 

Nothing gives them away as the Lake Michigan shoreline approaches. The land grows marshy between the small hills. French trappers used these bogs and swamps to bypass Lake Michigan, using them much like the intracoastal waterway along the Atlantic Coast. 

But I think it works, even if there’s a big steel plant and the Port of Indiana separating into two segments. Conversation efforts saved what they could and compromised where they had to. 

Indiana protected a small chunk as Indiana Dunes State Park in 1926, but it would take much longer before federal protection came and another 15,000 acres would be conserved. The state park still resides at the core of the national park. But the location of the dunes on Indiana’s small Lake Michigan shoreline – 43 miles 0 made it impossible to ward off the forces of industry. 

The protections that kept many of the western national parks pristine were not afforded when Indiana needed a port and Great Lake access. One of the largest dunes was torn down before the land could be protected. 

That leaves Mount Baldy at the east edge of the dune field as the high point in the national park. Its height is best not compared to better-known high points in western national parks. Much of the Midwest sat under glaciers during the last ice age and smashed down the existing mountains. Glacial action also formed the Indiana Dunes and other dune fields across the Great Lakes. 

I had no clue where the majority of people in the visitor center intended to travel. The spot dropped me in the middle of the Dunes. Mount Baldy already seemed too far east. West Beach seemed reasonable as I traveled along U.S. 12 westbound. 

Yet I opted for a placid hike at the Cowles Bog. At the visitor center, the name caught my attention on the map and the park ranger blurted out that the hike was his personal favorite. Named for Henry Cowles, who founded the field of plant ecology and advocated for the dunes’ protection, it’s an unexpected ecosystem this close to Lake Michigan. Cowles Bog is actually a fen since its water comes from an underground water source. Other portions of the dunes’ inner passage are formed by swamps and bogs. 

The spring wildlife emerged in force. Ducks and cranes flew in triangular formations above the waters. Frogs chirped forcefully, almost drowning out any other noise. Monarch butterflies took their time skimming through the wooded hills. A tiny snake sunned itself on the path. It would not be the last I spotted. 

Monarch of the dunes

I passed a half-dozen people, maybe less. The company of frogs, butterflies, snakes seemed to suit me better this morning. The trees only sported buds, as spring had not shown any consistent presence yet. But the amphibians and reptiles emerged on this clear, 70-degree morning. 

Other wildlife proved more elusive.  Encountering a clear that led to a larger pool in the bog, I walked out on some dead tree trunks bleached by the seasons. There I heard a hearty splash into the bog. I wasn’t sure what type of fish had jumped, but I looked straight ahead and realized the splash didn’t come from a fish. Two large beaver lodges stood in the pond before me. 

Only on my way back did I realize I wasn’t walking on stone hills. I was crossing sand ridges held in place by rooted vegetation. These elevations came to exist through glaciation. I ran short of time and would not make it to the secluded Lake Michigan beach reachable only from the Cowles Bog paths. 

If every non-presidential stop on this trip got the short shrift, the Indiana Dunes might have the most ground yet to explore. I could see the camping possibilities. I imagined hiking some of the lakeside dune fields or exploring the heron rookery on the Litle Calumet River or Pinhook Bog, the latter only accessible on a ranger-led tour. Separate from the main park, Pinhook Bog is mostly a floating mat of moss upon which other plants can grow. Pinhook also protects numerous rare carnivorous plants. 

But I treasured every moment in the Cowles Bog. The rush of spring and all the wildlife were welcome relief, as spring burst from these rare ecosystems on the Lake Michigan shore.

Snakes on the trail

Dayton, Ohio Twenty-Something and Four

Wright Brothers' last bicycle shop

Paul Lawrence Dunbar mural

The spring rain fell swiftly on Dayton. I scouted the century-plus buildings on its West Side, far too many of them with boarded-up windows, for a glance at a storefront that once sheltered world-changing ideas and designs. 

The streets are still brick here. The rain seemed to scrub away their winter grime. Tucked behind the mid-rises on West Third Street, I found the small brick building where the Wright Brothers operated a bicycle store before the proved powered flight was feasible. 

Dayton Aviation National Historical Park assembles a series of historic locations around the city. The thread connecting them is Dayton in the early 20th century.  You could be forgiven for thinking the Wrights and Dayton's greatest African-American author have no ties. But the historical park does not have to dive deep to find the connections. 

Wright flier

A massive visitor center stands next to the bicycle shop, and around the corner from the Paul Lawrence Dunbar House. The Wright brothers’ fourth bicycle shop is the only one still standing. The bicycle shop was where the two conducted preliminary experiments into flying machines. 

The sites include Hawthorn Hill, the stately house where Orville lived from 1914 till his death in 1948. Wilbur planned to live there but died in 1912. His father lived there as did his sister Katharine before her marriage. The most recent acquisition by the park services is the 1910 Wright Company factory, the first U.S. factory building specifically for airplanes, but that hasn't opened to the public yet. 

Pressed for time, I could not stop at the Dunbar House. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, a prominent African-American author and poet from the early 20th century, had major influence during a short life. Dunbar died at 33 from tuberculosis, but wrote prodigiously producing a volume of stories and poems, written both formally and dialectally. 

Aside from the Dayton connection, Dunbar and Orville Wright were classmates at Central High School, where Dunbar was the only African-American student, and the Wrights printed some of Dunbar’s poetry at their print shop. Dunbar’s work has grown in stature since his premature death, and deservedly so. 

No one can read the opening line of Sympathy - I know what the caged bird feels, alas! – and ever forget his way with words. Maya Angelou famously used Dunbar’s line for the title of her autobiography. 

My route to see my old friend Rob in Yellow Springs took me past one of the major NHP sites, the Huffman Prairie on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The Wright Brothers conducted many of their post-Kitty Hawk flight tests here, working through various versions of their flyer until they arrived upon a practical one. 

Dayton got a little screwed with the first flight. The city’s favorite sons took off for the Outer Banks in North Carolina for their historic flights. Dayton didn’t win the historic flight, it was the site of many others that moved the brothers toward viable flying. 

They refined their flyers through hundreds of subsequent flights at Huffman Prairie in Dayton, eventually building a hangar there to house the flyer. A portion of the marshy prairie has been restored to native grasses and hosts dozens of species of birds. 

I found myself imagining those early flights, some covering significantly more distance than the Kittty Hawk flights, and what people of Dayton thought at those early flying machines alone in the sky with the birds. 

Dayton’s historical park got the short shrift at the end of a long drive. But with the ample friends and reasons to return to Ohio, I expect I can hit a few other spots around Dayton some other trip.

Wright Brothers mosaic

Harry, James, and Herbert (Midwest presidential visits)

My path across the Midwest gave easy access to three National Park Service presidential sites – Harry S Truman National Historic Site in Independence, Missouri; James Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, Ohio, my hometown; and Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa. 

While Truman’s image has been rehabilitated as a reluctant, working-class president, Hoover and Garfield fall into the presidential gray areas. Garfield had the second-shortest presidency due to his assassination, and Hoover’s term coincided with the nation plummeting into the Great Depression.

All three came from modest circumstances. Born into a farming family, Truman entered politics after several business failures winning county post in Kansas City before winning a Senate seat. Garfield came from poverty but became a lawyer, a Union major general during the Civil War, and a nine-term Congressman, the only person to move directly from the Lower Chamber to the White House. Hoover’s father was a blacksmith in a small Quaker town and after his death, his mother took on extra work to ensure her three boys could continue their educations. Later he became wealthy in mining, retiring at 40. 

In a presidential election year, these sites give insights into the personalities of past leaders and the lives they led. Plus, these sites nicely broke up a 2,400-mile roundtrip from Colorado to Ohio. It was almost as if I were welcomed into a stranger’s home for a rest from the road. 

Truman House on Delaware Street

Truman
Truman’s stately house has anchored a street corner in downtown Independence since the 1860s. Built by George Gates, Bess Truman’s grandfather, from 1867 to 1885, numerous generations of the family lived there before the house was turned over to the National Park Service following Bess’s death in 1982. 

Truman lived in the house from his marriage until his years in D.C. as a Senator then President, but he and Bess did not buy it until after the death of his mother-in-law in 1952 and the end of his presidency.

The house underwent many renovations through the decades but has retained its look from the time of Bess Truman’s death. It underwent a $1 million renovation in the 2000s but the décor did not change. 

The Trumans along with daughter Margaret are buried on the grounds of the nearby Truman presidential library. But I had a few hundred miles left to drive that day and the house tour was my only indulgence that day. 

I toured the first floor (the second has never been open to the public), which includes many artifacts from the Trumans’ lives. An ornate centerpiece still hides a cache of marbles that Bess Truman took from one of her grandsons when she found him dropping them into the heating vents. The front parlor has the Steinway piano that Harry bought for Margaret and numerous portraits, including Bess Truman’s official White House portrait, which was accidently shipped back to Independence when the Trumans left the White House in 1953 and never returned. A replica of Truman’s coat and hat hangs from the rack near the side door. 

The visitor center resides in a historic firehouse in downtown Independence. The historic site also encompasses several adjacent homes that belonged to Truman relatives, including two houses that owned by Bess’s brothers and the Noland House, which was once owned by Truman’s aunt.

Post-presidential life changed significantly for the Trumans in the 1960s. The Secret Service moved across the street after JFK’s assassination, much to the consternation of the Trumans. Their home was already an attraction, one of the few places where one could glimpse a former president just by walking past the house. 

The historic site also includes the farmhouse and a 5-acre remnant of the 600-acre Truman farm in Grandview, where the president grew up. Since 15 miles separate the two, that leaves another piece of Truman history for a future trip through Kansas City. 

Lawnfield

Garfield
I had no excuse for long stretches between visits to Lawnfield, the Victorian home protected as the James A. Garfield National Historic Site. I visited the Garfield house several times. I remember some Civil War reenactors on the site sometime back in the late 1980s. 

Much of the Garfield house, dubbed Lawnfield by the press corps during the 1880 presidential campaign, is covered in buildings constructed after his death. His wife Lucretia lived until 1915, leaving more than three decades to add buildings to the property. The Garfields are buried in Cleveland’s Lakeview Cemetery at a massive mausoleum at the cemetery’s highest point. Lakeview has been Garfield’s preferred burial site. 

As president, Garfield barely had time to make a mark. He took two bullets from office-seeker/psychopath Charles Guiteau at a D.C. train station in July 1881. Presidential security had not changed since Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and Garfield was unguarded. His shooting was witnessed by Robert Todd Lincoln, Garfield’s secretary of war who was also at the station. 

Although the wounds seemed minor, Garfield’s health deteriorated during the summer, and he died in New Jersey in September. Some say Garfield had inadequate medical care and could have survived his wounds, but his assassin’s defense attorney tried to make the same argument at trial before Guiteau’s June 1882 hanging, so who really knows. While not a joke like William Henry Harrison who caught ill at his inauguration, Garfield will forever remain a great “what if” of the American presidency. 

Built when Mentor was a small agrarian community in Lake County, the house looms above Mentor Avenue and stands out due to its period paint job. The grayish purples transport visitors back to the Garfields’ era. 

Immediately behind the house lies a cabin-like structure that served as Garfield’s campaign office. He would campaign from the front porch, but the office communicated with the rest of the country. 

Garfield didn’t seek the presidency – he had won election to a Senate seat that he would have otherwise occupied in 1881 – and only acquiesced because the Republican Party had great difficulty agreeing on a candidate in 1880. Garfield’s active campaigning from his front porch, where people could hear him speak on the issues, was the forerunner of today’s national campaigns, as previous presidents had been passive campaigners at best. 

Lucretia’s expansion of the house included a library of her husband’s congressional and presidential papers, forming the first presidential library before such libraries became post-presidential standards. 

The structure that struck me the most was the windmill. I had passed that house thousands of times and never once spotted the yellow brick windmill tower that provided water to the house. Built by Lucretia to improve Lawnfield’s water supply, it is not the spindly windmills of western farms but solid brick tower. The wind became obsolete in the 1930s when the house connected to Mentor’s municipal water. 

The old carriage house turned museum charts Garfield’s early life, Civil War postings, and years in Congress, but mostly focuses on his assassination and slow death. Garfield died in New Jersey after his condition worsened, and we see a recreation of his deathbed, along with his death mask and other items such as a bed used to ferry him in his last months.

Hoover family cottage

Hoover
Hoover falls into the Jimmy Carter category of presidents – far from great, but a better person due to his work outside the Oval Office. The first president born west of the Mississippi, Hoover was part of the inaugural class at Stanford University and made a fortune in mining, retiring in his 40s. He gained prominence nationwide after leading food relief for 300 million people worldwide during World War I. Hunger remained a key issue for Hoover, whose advocacy led to the founding of UNICEF. 

But the Great Depression will always define Hoover, and the historic site gives the Depression a light touch, saying his reserved Quaker nature held him back from doing more, focusing instead on his childhood, his humanitarian efforts and philanthropy. 

Light touch might also describe Hoover’s actions to halt the Depression during his lone term. There was scant mention of the nation’s 25 percent unemployment or evicted Americans living in shanty towns that came to be called Hoovervilles. Hoover grew deeply unpopular, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trounced him during the 1932 presidential election. 

Given the presidency was four years of a 90-year life, focus on Hoover’s other accomplishments is understandable, although I was a little surprised to see such a time in U.S. history treated so lightly (full disclosure – I did not go into the presidential library adjacent to the historic site; the library might have taken a more even tone). 

Hoover graves

Hoover’s recreation of 1870s West Branch includes a number of historic homes including the Hoover cottage, a school, and recreations of his father’s blacksmith shop. It’s a nice open-air museum conducive to wandering on a gentle spring afternoon. 

On a hill above the library lie the modest monument with the graves of Hoover and his wife Lou. To their east lies a restored 80-acre tallgrass prairie, the same grasses that covered most of the Great Plains before settlement and only cover a tiny percentage today. 

From this small hill, you can see the whole town, the historic buildings, and stand where a young Hoover would have stood. West Branch might be a little bigger than it was in the 1870s (the town has less than 3,000 residents). 

Supposedly Hoover wanted others to find inspiration in his modest roots and feel they could succeed as he had. It’s a noble thought. Sometimes a view from a little elevation is all we need to catch new inspiration.

Clear skies for the 2024 solar eclipse

Old friends and the 2024 eclipse

For years, I know where I would stand on April 8, 2024. Maybe not the exact spot, but somewhere in the path of this year's eclipse. 

I am no eclipse chaser. I don't feel like one. But if the path falls close to me, I must go. It didn’t come close to me, but its path crossed Ohio, putting my hometown of Cleveland in totality for nearly four minutes. 

I worked to find myself in the path of totality. I have lived in the path once (Nashville total eclipse, August 2017), returned to an unbeatable volunteer gig (Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, October 2023), and now can claim Ohio on April 8, 2024. 

Originally I planned to fly. As years passed between Ohio trips, I realized this one required me to drive. 

I had dim hopes for any solar event in Ohio’s rainy months. In the days preceding the eclipse, it felt like we barely received an hour of daily sunlight. Better to expect clouds than end up disappointed. I had to say that after the 2017 eclipse experience. 

All dressed up and ready to view.

We had a prime viewing spot in downtown Nashville. Then a small patch of clouds blocked our view of totality. I didn’t even blog about it at the time. Getting mad at the weather – what good does that do? That Monday I learned the lesson of eclipses – there are zero guarantees no matter how good a spot you find. You have to hope the sky stays clear for totality. 

At the time, I shrugged and remarked that 2024 was not too far away. Suddenly, 2024 arrived. Another Monday eclipse. 

Plans had been in the works for a while. Still I kept eclipse hopes modest. For this one, my high school friends planned to watch from the background. I spent little time worrying if history would repeat itself, just having a good time with old friends. 

Afterward, they acknowledged to not realizing what was about to occur. Indeed, I had no real clue either since I had clouds and twilight in 2017. I stuck with low expectations. Better to see magic than overhype something that doesn’t happen. 

 I was fine with the background viewpoint since they had chickens. Legend about the 1878 total eclipse that crossed much of the unoccupied West says that Thomas Edison set up his equipment in a chicken coop in Rawlins, Wyoming. When totality arrived, the residents of Edison’s temporary quarters supposedly swarmed backed in, thinking that night had arrived and they would be exposed to predators. Edison fumed over potential damage to his equipment. 

The anticipation builds as the moon starts its move. You have to track the moon’s progress. The first sliver to move into the Sun demands attention; the view will only improve from there. 

 What still amazes me is how much daylight remains even as the moon moves more than halfway into the sun’s path. Everyone expected some darkness during October’s 2023 ecliose, but we got a long stretch of weird light. 

 As the eclipse moved passed the 90 percent mark, the sky turned weird. The air turned cold as if the sunlight no longer reached us. We were bathed in unusual light, shades only possibly when most of the sun is blocked. But until totality and the final sliver of sun slipped behind the moon, the sky would stay afternoon bright. 

What no one tells anyone is the second totality begins, everything changes. You can never go back. That sliver of sun slips into a circle of black and the sun’s normally invisible corona rises in white shadows around the blackened moon. No one on this planet will ever see a faster shift from daylight to dusk. 

We took off our eclipse glasses, as the risk to the eyes is gone during totality. During the annual eclipse in 2023, we could not removed them, as there is no safe viewing due to the “ring of fire” nature of the annular eclipse. 

 My friend Marje spotted a red spot near the moon’s edge. A friend’s photo later confirmed it was a solar flare surging out of the moon’s shadow. It was one of many in his camera, but one we could definitely see during totality. 

I failed in one regard – I left multiple solar filters for my camera at home. Were it not for one picture from my friend Dru’s phone, there would be no evidence that I saw this eclipse. The pictures from mine looked like shots of the sun, moon or some random star in the night sky. 

The enormity of those four minutes cannot be overstated. The sky did something it would not normally do. Birds squawked as if twilight descended. Twilight had arrived, even if we could see the edge of twilight in the zones outside totality on either side of us. 

As the moment ended, we returned to our eclipse glasses. The moon would linger across the sun for another hour or more, but once totality passed, nothing could top what we already witnessed. 

Only one area proved disappointing. Marje and Dru’s cat slept through the whole proceedings, but that was unsurprising. The nine chickens didn’t budge. They pecked at the ground as nonchalantly as they would any afternoon. 

It’s their loss. Those chickens won’t be pecking the ground the next time an eclipse passes across northeast Ohio.

Not even an odd glance. They just pecked. 

Guided by Voices rally at home-state tour opener

I could have just waited until May. Guided by Voices planned a Denver show, the first since I moved to Colorado. 

But Robert Pollard and Company chose to kick off their 13-date 2024 tour in Columbus the Friday before the eclipse. I already leaned toward driving back to the capital city, but the chance the go with my old concert buddies Mike and Ron while also getting my old friend Jeff to his first GBV show sealed the deal. 

Across three decades, I have never seen Guided by Voices in the same venue twice. This time they landed at the Columbus Anthaneum, a spectacular ballroom in a former Masonic Temple. The stone staircases and wooden handrails in the stairs spoke to its 19th century construction. The ballroom has a general admission floor and seats on either side. For a GBV, it fit like a glove even if it never felt close to selling out. 

 Opening band The Laughing Chimes came from Athens, Ohio, and their set leaned heavily on songs influenced by Joy Division and early REM. 

We didn't have to wait long for GBV. They kicked off with a old tune - My Impression Now from Fast Japanese Spin Cycle - and gave us all-time classic Motor Away by the 10-minute mark. The show would not let up from there. 

GBV layered in many songs from Nowhere to Go but Up, its latest record and third released in 2023. The sheer volume of releases means I rarely buy more than one a year, but I choose with with Nowhere to Go but Up. I have listened to The Race is On, the King is Dead enough to sing along and have people in the crowd stare when I did. 

Since the band tours more irregularly these days, all five songs from Nowhere to Go but Up were live debuts since they had not played live in a while. As usual, the show cut across their entire career – while Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes got three songs apiece, a whopping 24 albums were represented onstage, most by a single song. 

 For once, a GBV seemed to touch on a wide variety of tones, such as dropping the slow-burning Volcano from Surrender your Poppy Field among the peppier rock songs. A single Pollard solo track, Love is Stronger than Witchcraft, also broke things up. 

Pollard’s banter was a little more erratic, talking about Columbus as a good town for GBV (just an hour from the band’s homebase in Dayton). But then he railed against the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a handful of inductees (Jon Bon Jovi and Dolly Parton) before admitting GBV wasn’t getting in, even as the band celebrated 40 years in 2023. 

Still, the music never wavered, and Pollard’s drunken mumblings between songs never carried into the songs, his delivery crisp and nonsensical as ever. His much-younger bandmates found a comfortable groove then stayed there. The six-song encore was a GBV show in miniature, starting with longtime opener A Salty Salute - known for its anthemic shout "The club is open" - and wrapping up with Glad Girls, a fan favorite and frequent show-ender. 

Between those two, GBV found time for live favorite Shocker in Gloomtown and the anthemic Rally Boys I wonder how much longer GBV might tour. Pollard seems robust in his late 60s and his younger bandmates probably provide needed energy. The man consumed a cooler of Miller Lite bottles as during their 42-song marathon. 

If they are slowing down, at least Guided by Voices' live shows can still reach the heights they have long occupied.

A cloud of cranes in the SLV

The setting never gets old. Winter is still going strong, but it bends toward spring. The stage sets in the quiet depths of the San Luis Valley, with snow-covered Blanca Peak standing sentinel on its east side. 

If the sandhill cranes have returned, they won’t stay silent long into the morning. In January a few cranes mingled with the Canadian geese around the Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge south of Raton in northern New Mexico. They pranced in barnyards and occasionally flew on a crisp winter morning. In April I would see a few small flocks of sandhill cranes above the Platte River near Kearney Nebraska. I had to watch them and listen to their chuckles till they disappeared in the trees. 

I have come to love the experience of the Rocky Mountain flock. An estimated 95 percent of all Rocky Mountain sandhill cranes pass through the valley in October and March on their seasonal migrations. Set your alarm – they will swarm the valley as spring approaches. Early on a March Saturday, a few small flocks hit the air. 

But the best place to see the sandhill cranes remains deeper in the valley, at the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge, south of its namesake town.

Monte Vista holds a festival in the second weekend of March. I always find it helpful to visit a week before or after the festival, since crowds of humans join the crowds of cranes. 

Before heading north to their nesting grounds, the cranes fuel up on the barley and other grains grown in the SLV. The refuge has a single 3-mile loop road, one short trail and numerous vantage points for crane watching – canals, ponds, and plains covered in the vegetation that draws the birds to stay. 

Eagle and nest

Cranes are not the only birds occupying Monte Vista in late winter. Near the loop’s end, a bald eagle’s nest stands in one of the few trees. On this morning, half of the eagle couple watched light traffic on the auto road. 

The eagle already seemed tired of the chuckling cranes despite their low numbers.  Both species return every year, with eagles mating for life and rebuilding the same nests. 

If the eagles weren’t tired of cranes, they soon would be.A viewpoint on the county road provided the best panorama of the visiting cranes. The flocks grew larger and larger, until the sandhill cranes rose above the valley in a mass ascension. 

Hundreds, maybe thousands of chuckling birds took to the sharp blue skies. The eagles stayed put. A second eagle, possibly the mate of the one perched next to the nest, sat near a pond on the refuge’s end. It didn’t budge when a smaller group of cranes coasted above its head. 

I have seen them up close. Watching the giant flock from greater distance felt proper this year. I have seen other bird species rise en masse, but the crane ascension is something different. It was not done defensively; they seemed to make a group decision to migrate. 

There’s probably a few stragglers or late arrivals still in the SLV. Next year, those cranes or their descendants will be there again.

Crane trio

An eagle watching the cranes

Fine sands and porcupines: Adventures in the SLV

The shadows on the Great Sand Dunes grow long in the afternoon. This was a new view; I had seen sunrises and people turning the snowmelt creek into Colorado’s best beach, but not the shadows adding new textures to North America’s largest dune field. 

Blanca Peak and the Sange de Cristo Mountains were snow-capped, but the caps felt tenuous and too easily melted for late winter. We can only hope for many more storms before summer arrives. Only a thin group of visitors mounted the dunes this Friday. 

The weather complied – sunny and in the mid-50s – but the wind did not. Sand was constantly pushing toward the east, with little bits of rock stinging exposed skin as I crossed the once and future bed of Medano Creek. The waters were still miles above the dune field, and this dry crossing would transform into beach in a few months. But winter still reigned here. 

The sands might be the most visible attraction in the valley. A few turns off the main road hide many more. I ended up at the Alamosa Wildlife Refuge. Off U.S. route 160, the San Luis Valley turns into a mix of farmland and protected grounds for migratory birds as well as curious native fauna. 

As for the birds, there wasn’t much diversity on Friday afternoon, almost solely red-winged blackbird talking from the tops of the tallest grasses. A few wings of ducks flew above the canals, and a pair of raptors, probably the hawks who nest there every year, soared in pursuit of prey. 

Rio Grande

The Rio Grande coursed by, pushed by the wind and with curves of rime ice in the shadows. The river is never wide, but in the refuge it still feels strong. Had you told me it was just an unnamed irrigation canal like the others in the refuge, I would have accepted that. It’s hard to believe this modest stream will form the entire Texas/U.S. Border with Mexico. Here the various channels and wetlands make agriculture possible in the San Luis Valley and turn the land into potent habitat for migrating birds. 

Without the warmth of the dunes, the valley let winter resume. A chill took over and cancelled plans to hike the full trail along the river thickets. 

For its flat and mostly treeless appearance, this refuge teems with life. Not just the birds, but almost every mammal native to Colorado resides here or passes through. I have seen beaver. Reptiles and amphibians also flourish around the Rio Grande its irrigation canals, ample river plants, and occasional trees. 

This visit brought an encounter with the creature I most hoped to see at the Alamosa refuge the second I heard they inhabited these lands - a porcupine. I had only seen them living in zoos or dead along the road. This one didn’t move fast, not did it seem particularly frightened. 

Stay there, porcupine.

Anyone might have mistaken him for a tumbleweed. The wind did not take him anywhere. He did not loiter long before stepping into the reeds but living his hind end showing. The quills looked like hair (and they are made of keratin) but here I knew better than to go closer. Porcupines don’t shoot their quills but back into predators and pin them the painful, hard-to-remove quills. 

Suddenly the night began to move in. Darkness came quickly to the valley, even as some daylight hit its surrounding mountains. Blanca Peak was recast in surroundings of pinks and blues, a sturdy Belt of Venus. 

In that light, every lump of twisted grasses on the refuge’s flatscape could be mistaken for a porcupine.

See, they blend right in. 

Blanca Peak, Belt of Venus colors

Las Vegas at night

The Plaza Hotel at sunrise

Driving the full way from Las Cruces to the Springs would have been brutal. We decided on one last stop less than four hours from home, but with enough character to merit a stop. 

There were a number of crossroads with a few old hotels and a bar or restaurant, but many stretches with no lodging anywhere. 

Fortunately, Las Vegas checked all the boxes. I don't mean the Las Vegas everyone knows, but the historic one in northeastern New Mexico. Their shared name, which translates from Spanish as “the meadows,” feels much more applicable to the New Mexico city. New Mexico’s Las Vegas lies along the high plains, 100 miles south of Raton, and just east of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. 

Much of the land to Vegas’ west is protected as the Pecos Wilderness, including the headwaters of the Pecos River and Truchas Peak, New Mexico’s second-highest mountain. 

Las Vegas is a city many have seen but few have heard of. The city has more than a century of movie-making experience, starting with Tom Mix westerns in the 1910s. 

In Easy Rider, the parade scene took place in Las Vegas (Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper end up arrested for crashing the parade). 

When U.S. enemies invaded Colorado in the original Red Dawn, Las Vegas became Calumet, “Where the Great Plains Meet the Might Rockies” and where our teenage heroes faced off with the invaders. Most of the buildings used in filming were Vegas originals, and still stand, with the Calumet cowgirl mural still visible. 

 In the TV series Longmire, Vegas plays Absaroka, Wyoming, even if the town plaza is unmistakably New Mexican. New Mexico’s long-running film credit makes it a common stand-in for the rest of the West, with the town’s proximity to the High Plains playing Kansas in Kevin Costner’s Wyatt Earp. 

These days Vegas might be best known for No Country for Old Men, as it played a major filming site. Rewatching the movie after I returned, I was shocked at how much of Las Vegas appeared in the movie. The city stood in for Texas border towns Eagle Pass and Laredo, with a highway bridge dressed up to look like a U.S.-Mexico border crossing. 

The motor courts on the east edge of town and the historic Plaza Hotel played prominent roles. Dating to 1881, the Plaza Hotel holds reams of history, not just movies. The hotel hosted the first reunion of Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in 1901, and Roosevelt announced his run for reelection in 1904 from Vegas. The Plaza doubled its size when its owner bought a defunct department store adjacent to it on the Las Vegas Plaza. 

The hotel was our main reason for stopping here. The historic hotel is still priced reasonably, has a café, a nice bar in the fine-dining restaurant, a coffee bar, and a lobby selling local wares. When you walk in, there stands a staircase where Javier Bardem’s hitman confronts Woody Harrelson’s bounty hunter. Many of the rooms have signs explaining who stayed there during which production, including President Roosevelt, the Coen Brothers, Patrick Swayze, James Woods, and dozens more.  

The rooms were spacious and somewhat spartan (with a 21st century bathroom), but I am not complaining. Historic hotels should emulate their prime era, and the Plaza certainly does. When the Topeka, Atchison and Santa Fe Railroad arrived in 1879, Las Vegas took off and the demand for hotels soared. 

After a dinner in the café, we wandered the plaza and the main streets that were mostly deserted on a Sunday evening. A handful of bars and restaurants stayed open. Outside downtown sat Las Vegas’ Carnegie library, the only Carnegie built in New Mexico, and New Mexico Highlands University, a modern-looking university that dates back to 1891. 

We passed the now-closed Western Wear store where Josh Brolin wandered in wearing just a hospital gown and cowboy boots. A slow current drove the Gallinas River, separating the two towns that later merged into Las Vegas. The river broadens on the south end of town; it will join the Pecos River further downstream. 

The plaza was well-lit but empty, just a few carryout customers from the pizza place and people ending Sunday dinner at the Plaza Hotel. A few skittish cats sprinted across the plaza. 

In the sunrise, the pavilion was the domain of pigeons. We came back after a hearty breakfast at Charlie's S'pic & Span (amazing tortillas made onsite), the plaza needed a last look. The hotel’s façade glowed in the chilly but clear morning. A few people walked dogs but it stayed quiet aside from the pigeons. 

 At one end of the plaza stands a plaque attached several pieces of petrified wood. On it is the declaration that Brigadier Gen. Stephen Kearny gave at the Las Vegas Plaza in 1846 at the start of the Mexican-American War, telling the town residents they are now part of the U.S. 

I’ll take the little, historic Las Vegas over the eyesore in the desert any day. Hopefully I’ll take in the little town on the high plains against before too much time slips away.

Tortillas on the line