40 miles in a straight line

Next stop after the Pikes Peak was the Great Dunes National Park, nestling in the San Luis Valley - a desert basin between fingers of the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains. After the eye candy of mountains and massive vistas where 1 inch on the horizon equates to 38 miles, hitting the desert plains was educational.

It's hard to tell when you're driving through a place out here sometimes, the buildings seem scattered by some giant monopoly player from a great height. Dirt tracks spear off at random to terminate in a loose collection of sheds, shacks and farmsteads. Back home where we don't have the space, our villages, towns and cities mostly are structured around a centre point, giving clear sense of where a place begins and where it ends. Out here, there's just so much space that I guess it just never seemed relevant to the original settlers. That great American drive for equality means every place gets to call itself city, even the stuff where the houses are like commuters on the tube, all studiously avoiding contact with each other.

Once I left the highway, it was 40 miles to the turn off for the Dunes themselves. 40 miles. In a straight line. Thank you Ralph Teetor for preventing cramp in my right foot.

My calves could only cope with climbing up the second highest dune to 450ft, but even from there the views were spectacular. Another wierd moment of dislocation - had to keep pinching myself I was still in Colorado.

Great Dunes slideshow here

Bed for the night was a viewing spot by the side of the road under a massive starry sky glittering with unfamiliar constellations. Dawn breaking behind me with beams of sunlight cutting through the mountains and drawing shapes ahead on plains was equally special.