A Road Trip Plan Hatches
Ahhhhhh, fall…
With its cooler temperatures and less crowded tourist attractions, can you beat this time of year for a trip? We decided we would do a road trip in September before the cold weather came and we had a blast!
It is sort of funny how this trip hatched. This summer, we met with our investment advisor to see how “on track” we were with retirement savings. He had posters on his wall of various national parks all of which we had been to, with the exception of Great Sand Dunes – I had actually never heard of it before but the unique look of its poster really caught my eye. I looked up the park that evening and learned that they had wheelchairs to lend out so people could go right out on the dunes. Plans for a Colorado road trip were born.
A decent road trip, in my opinion, combines a few hours of driving each day with some enjoyable destinations that can be seen in roughly half a day. With that in mind, we came up with a sort of loop trip beginning in Dinosaur National Monument up to Vail and then to Colorado Springs. For the drive home, we headed south to Great Sand Dunes and then west to Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Grand Junction and finally back home. And with that intro, now on to the experiences had with each destination.
Dinosaur Park Activities
Dinosaur National Monument is HUGE! It straddles Utah and Colorado with the most well known part of the park being the quarry on the Utah side. It is simply a building constructed on a rock hillside filled with exposed dinosaur bones and really is something to see. Being a visitors center, it is fully accessible and you can roll right over to some of the bones and touch them as Jamie is doing below:
We spent our morning and early afternoon in the Utah area of the park (the Quarry and Cub Creek areas) and I am including that part of the map along with some notes on the places we stopped at.
A Cabin, a Hike, and Some Petroglyphs
The inset in the map is the Josie Morris cabin, and you can drive right to it on the Cub Creek Road, the last part of which is not paved. There is parking in an unpaved area and the grounds right around the cabin are sort of packed dirt and are navigable in a wheelchair, though not ideal. The doors to the cabin are very small, and the inside is completely empty. You can look through the windows it has since they are about the height to do that in a chair.
The area around the cabin is peaceful and there is a small creek and some picnic tables available. I can understand why someone would want to live there as long as Josie Morris did.
While we were by the cabin, we decided to try going up Box Canyon with the Freewheel attached to Jamie’s chair. The park brochures said it was an easy trail to do with kids, and sometimes that verbiage signals that though it may not be ADA compliant, it still may be possible with a wheelchair. This trail was pretty tough though – the first part when through a little wooded area and there were tree roots across the path. Eventually, it opened up more and the trail became sandier and there were stairs. The photos below show where we decided to stop and turn around:
Along Cub Creek Road there are petroglyphs that are fun to see. If you confined to a chair, however, you will have to view them from your vehicle. The photos below are the petroglyphs closest to the Cabin and you can see how far we had to walk up the little trail to get close to them:
Granted, you can actually pull the car forward for a better look, so they are definitely viewable.
When you get to the Colorado side of Dinosaur National Monument, there is seasonal visitors center and a road that leads up to Plug Hat Butte with a ½ mile paved trail. We bypassed this as we were short on time, but looking back, it would have been a nice place to stop. There are additional overlooks if you continue up the road, but it would be a pretty long drive to get all the way to where it ends. More information about Dinosaur National Monument accessibility is here.
Gondolas and a Garden at Vail
Our next stop was Vail Colorado and aside from doing some wandering around the shops at the bottom of the ski lifts, we did two primary activities. First, we took the Eagle Bahn gondola to the top of a mountain. They will slow down the gondola or even stop it for you to get on in a wheelchair, so it is accommodating that way. You get a great view of Vail on the ride up:
The top is laid like this:
When we went, a whole group was coming up for a wedding in tuxedos and formal dresses. There is a little restaurant on top, a paved trail and a large deck that offered us this lovely view of the aspen trees beginning to change their color:
All in all, I was pretty happy with the accessibility at the top of the gondola – we walked the entire paved trail and the thistle was in bloom, adding a nice mountain touch.
The other activity we did in Vail was to visit the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, which is on the edge of town as you are heading to Denver. I’ll admit that with it being late September, I wondered if there would be much to see that would still be alive in the garden and was pleasantly surprised. This attraction is free of charge and fully accessible. Below is a map of the area with some advice on where to park:
There are ADA compliant trails throughout and they weave around areas of plants indigenous to the area. There is also some art at the edge of a large grassy area and for the time we went, the changing leaf color in the gardens and surrounding mountains was beautiful. What an attraction Vail has in these gardens:
Garden of the Gods
We left Vail and headed to Colorado Springs for two more wonderful tourist attractions that have decent access for wheelchairs in the Rockies. One of them, Garden of the Gods, is free of charge, so that is a bonus. This is a pretty heavy use area with a nice visitors center and plenty of sidewalks weaving in and around the rock formations. The formations themselves are red sandstone and other sedimentary layers that have been pushed up vertically over the eons of uplift from the Rocky Mountains.
The sidewalk shown in the first photo is typical of what you have to wheel around on. The other photos are various views of the formations there:
On Top of the World at Pikes Peak
Behind Garden of the Gods lies Pikes Peak, one of the inspirations behind the writing of “America the Beautiful” well over a hundred years ago:
The mountain is one of Colorado’s “Fourteeners” (i.e. mountains higher than fourteen thousand feet) and you can drive all the way to the top if you have a person using a wheelchair in your party (otherwise, you can only drive to an area where you board a shuttle to go to the top).
There is a charge to use the road to drive up to the summit and you can find the pricing details using this link. At the top, there is a dated building with a gift shop, snack bar, and restrooms, but the city is in the process of building a much nicer facility, though I don’t know when it will be done.
You will be able to get a wheelchair around the building and to the areas with views, but when we were there, though it was mostly sunny , it was windy and rather cold, so Jamie hung out at a table by the gift shop while Leslie and I took turns looking around outside.
You are well into a harsh habitat where trees will not grow and the landscape appears almost “Mars-like”. Also, at such a high altitude, you may feel its effects and be a little light headed – I know I was. But the view from up on the top is spectacular:
The Tallest Sand Dunes in North America
The day after our Pikes Peak excursion, we headed south for a few hours until we reached the place that inspired this trip from the get-go – Great Sand Dunes National Park. The problem was that there was a stiff 30 mph wind blowing and as such, conditions just were not that good for going out on the sand, much less with a person in a wheelchair. We spent some time in the visitors center there, but went no further and someday, I really would like to go back.
For now, this is a picture of what the Dunes look like against the backdrop of mountains in the area:
A Lot of Alligators
When travelling anywhere, sometimes you need to be a little flexible and have some ideas of activities to do if the ones you originally planned on do not pan out. Before we left Colorado Springs, the friends we stayed with there noticing that it was still windy mentioned that if we could not make the Dunes, there was a place called Colorado Gator Reptile Park that they took their kids to when they were small one year. They had a good time in a unique setting. So, off we went to see the resident alligators in Colorado. Besides the gators, there had some large turtles and they actually raise fish in the warm springs there. It was a little cheesy and redneck-like, but fun. There were some boards set up at different places to keep the turtles in, but you could experience the entire facility by wheelchair.
I posted this collage of our experience on my Facebook page when we got home:
Hurray for getting to hold a little alligator!
A Deep, Narrow Canyon
The next morning, we headed to the south rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. This was actually another park that I had not heard of until planning this trip, but was fascinated by the rugged beauty. There was a back deck off of the visitors center where you could view it from a bit of a distance. A long stairway led down to some hikes with more stairs that would get you closer to the rim. Obviously, this area is impossible to do with a chair and you can tell it from the photo below, which I took from the visitors center deck:
Facilities and viewpoints for wheelchairs are scant on the north rim, so we did not even attempt that area. By the time we arrived to the inn an the vineyard we stayed at in Palisade (just east of Grand Junction), we were into the early evening hours and had just missed the wine tasting they offered. It was a relaxing place though – we decided it might be fun to go back there some day. The next day we drove home.
The Road Trip Takeaways
I seriously love a good road trip – to me, it is a great way to enjoy a vacation and this trip was great! I always try to learn from my vacation experiences so I can do wheelchair travelling better the next time around. For our visit to Colorado, my two road trip takeaways are:
- Favor places that really are intended for wheelchairs. Looking back, had I done this, we probably would have skipped Box Canyon and the Cub Creek Road area in Dinosaur National Monument, but we would have been able to experience Plug Hat Butte with its paved trail fully.
- Have some kind of backup plan or secondary activity you can do if the first choice does not work out. Yes, we missed walking on the Dunes, but we had fun watching alligators hanging out in warm springs surrounded by old automobile tires. Seriously, what could be better?!
Happy Travels!