var title         = 'Southwest Excursion : New Mexico to Great Sand Dunes : Photographs by Simmons B. Buntin';
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var footer        = '© 2009 Simmons B. Buntin. All rights reserved.';
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var majorCaption  = new Array( 'Off U.S. 26 between Deming and Hatch, New Mexico, we stopped for a roadside photo and found these interesting gourds.', 'By a wrong turn-of-good-fortunate, we found ourselves at Santa Fe\'s historica plaza, though we originally intended to drive by without stopping.', 'The plaza and surrounding historic buildings put some of us in a far-out-peace-dude kind of mood!', 'Self-portrait trio #1.', 'My daughters enjoying the colorful window displays on the Santa Fe plaza.', 'Leapfrog at the entrance to a floor-lit art gallery.', 'The next morning, atop Raton Pass, the summit along the New Mexico-Colorado border.', 'Self-portrait trio #2.', 'Our little front-wheel-drive Honda Fit, though loaded to the birm (or perhaps because of that), did pretty well on the snow-packed roads.', 'There wasn\'t a whole lot of snow, but it had been coming down steadily since about 9 p.m. the night before.', 'And of course coming from Tucson, it was great fun and very much worth the stop.', 'Our first of seven national parks/monuments stops was Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.', 'We didn\'t have much time there, since we were in a rush to get to Denver in time for my reading, but still had a good time among the mountainous terrain.', 'And while we didn\'t get to see the actual fossil beds, we did see these great fossilized redwoods.', 'And in this case, a new Ponderosa pine growing the shattered petrified stump of a prehistoric redwood.', 'Tree huggers? Sure, why not?!', 'Our drive to and from Florissant Fossil Beds through the Colorado high country was gorgeous.', 'And here and there we saw wildlife, too, such as this herd of female elks.', 'The next day, we borrowed our friends\' daughter and traveled up to Rocky Mountain National Park, the first time I\'ve been there since we moved from Denver back in 2000.', 'Though Trail Ridge Road was closed, there was still plenty to explore.', 'My daring older daughter (you know, the one who scales boulders at Saguaro National Park in bare feet; too cold to do that here!).', 'A few shots of the icy stream here.', 'This is one of my favorites, taken with a wide-angle lens that brings the bottom edge of the photo right to my toes.', 'It was actually colder than it otherwise looks.  My younger daughter and our guest had to borrow some of my extra layers to keep warm!', 'While the girls scouted for wildlife, pinecones, and such as part of the National Park Service\'s outstanding Junior Ranger program, I scaled some rocks for a better photo.', 'The road to frozen-over Bear Lake was open, and, beyond that, worth the slippery hike onto the lake itself.', 'Self-portrait trio #3 (actually, not a self-portrait, but the trio part holds true...).', 'View of the high peaks surrounding Bear Lake. In all our years of living in Denver and many trips to Rocky Mountain National Park, I\'d never actually been to Bear Lake.', 'Though frigid, the weather was beautiful.', 'Trudging through the snow atop the frozen lake.', 'Near the northern exit to the park, we stopped at a cool rock outcropping for a little mountain goating of our own.', 'What a bunch of cuties!  My daughters are in the back.', 'And here\'s their old man, loving the \"high life,\" as they say.', 'At another location we found a long icicle that could, with just enough pinache, be played as a flute.', 'Snow-topped beaver pond.', 'My older daughter makes a personal snowman.', 'Back at our Jason and Shannan\'s house in Superior, near Boulder, we monkeyed around at a big pirate ship play structure.  This is their son, who opted out of the day\'s RMNP excursion.', 'Pretty sneaky, that little guy!', 'Our other friends joined us for a cookout; this is their daughter.', 'My older daughter, showing pirate captain attitude (I guess).', 'Back at Jason and Shannan\'s home, the whole gaggle of kids, anchored on the left by our older daughter, and on the right by our younger daughter.', 'Before heading out of town the next day, we stopped by our old Denver house, built in 1903. Glad to see it\'s been repainted, though I\'m not a fan of the big wooden fence.', 'By evening, we made it down to Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve. Along the way, we passed Mount Blanca.', 'We also passed, at some farms, a pretty sizable flock of Sand Hill cranes, though didn\'t stop for photos. So here\'s another shot of Mount Blanca in their place.', 'Another mountain view, this off a side road into Great Sand Dunes National Park. I get excited about mountains and clouds, of course.', 'Zoom shot of the mountain\'s summit.', 'And, well, yes, another shot.  The vertical nature of this photo strikes me as something of Andean nature, for some reason.', 'One of our first glimpses of the dunes, which are just awesome. When I lived in Denver I made a handful of camping trips here.', 'Sure, the dunes are great and all that, but I live for these little beauties.', 'Self-portrait trio #4.  Pretty sunny out there and them there Great Sand Dunes.', 'The long walk to the dunes.', 'Which sometimes we made backwards to keep the wind and sand out of our faces.', 'Yup, it\'s a long way to walk in sand. A long way indeed.', 'But the views, once you get there, are pretty spectacular.  I\'m not sure, but think this may be Mount Herard.', 'A lonely little cloud in an always-windy place.', '\"I\'m the queen of the world!\"  Or, well, this initial sand summit, anyway.', 'Exploring the dunes. We were fortunate to arrive just before the visitor\'s center closed to partake in the Junior Ranger program here, as well.', 'A view of what I believe is Carbonate Mountain, from the dunes. These peaks are all in the mid-13,000-foot height range.', 'Cool shadows, sunstrikes, and angles on a dunetop.', 'I believe there\'s a daughter with me in this shadow....', 'Even your own footsteps get covered over pretty quickly in all this wind.', 'The only problem with the great joy of running or sliding down a dune is the hard work of getting back up.', 'Beautifully intricate dunelets looking back to the east, toward Carbonate Mountain.', 'Another view toward Herard Mountain. You can see, in the foreground, the wind moving the sand atop the dunes.', 'Ditto for the sand atop this dune, not to mention my daughter.', 'It won\'t be long before this rock is covered up and then, who knows, uncovered again years or millenia from now.', 'You wouldn\'t think very much could live in a harsh environment like this...', '... but wouldn\'t you know, even out here life perserveres.', 'Sitting down on the job?', 'Well, sometimes crawling is easier than walking. And there\'s my bare-foot girl again.', 'These clouds eventually nestled in over the dunes to mute the setting sun.', 'I\'m not into titling my photos in a series like this, but this one strikes me as, \"Trajectory.\"', 'A panorama of contrasts.', 'Scaling the dunes.', 'And then collapsing on top. No, actually, here we\'re trying to make a sand angel.', 'A last view among the dunes before the shadows settle in.', 'Golden grass along the edge of the sand.', 'Another shot of the grass, with the warm sunlight in the background, the sand in cloud shadow so it appears nearly black.', 'Sunset along the Great Sand Dunes.', 'Another shot, with the dunes in the background.', 'Though the dunes shaded themselves fairly quickly, that gorgeous afternoon light stayed with us for a bit longer.', 'And on the way out, we saw loads of deer, like these two sparring male mule deers.', 'We also saw, pretty close up, a lone pronghorn antelope, though couldn\'t photograph it in time. So we\'ll leave this leg of the trip with the two deer.' );
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