California National Parks ~2026 Superbloom

 Wow This is our 61st of 63 National parks in the contiguous US National park. The 2 we missed are both islands that we couldn't get on the ferry. lol .....but they are islands, so do they count?? It is still a big bucket list milestone for us. But we will go to the 2 islands some day. First lets start with breakfast. Peach pie from Capital Reef NP, with sharp Mexican cheese and plain Greek yogurt!...oh, I may have added a dollop of whipped cream. We still have a few frozen in our freezer for home. Leaving Gunnison the left over snow left these really cool bands on the mountain ridges. It looks like someone painted them The drive to Great sand dunes took us over the continental divide! We went up to around 8000 ft and then the earth turned in to a few hundred miles of flat grazing lands.  We went up MANY switchbacks to the Continental divide over 11000 ft!! We stopped at a tiny diner and I had a yak burger, raised locally, homemade bun, and local potatoes! it was a fun experie...

 We had never heard of this park before this trip. It became a park in 1999 but was a National Monument since 1933. We arrived Thursday afternoon ahead of the weather and did a great 3 mile hike finding many wildflowers...knowing it might snow and be cold the next day. Really hard to get a picture showing the depth of this canyon. Day 1 not great light. We hiked down in the valley to explore before the snow in case the road closed the next day. It is so hard to capture how deep this canyon is! The park was overtaken by a wildfire last year. Some areas are still closed...but the wildflowers are persevering!! It was a beautiful hike. Coming back up the trail you can really see the devastation from last years fire. Had to have one of our last Mexican meals as we will be leaving Colorado soon.... And yes the snow did come!!! Woke to snow so had a slow start! Cornmeal pecan pancakes, bacon, and some of our California oranges! we decided to start the day low again and wait for the snow t...