Great Sand Dunes and Colorado Gators (mostly Colorado Gators)

Driving from Center, Colorado to the Great Sand Dunes National Park is a desolate and beautiful trip. You cruise through the high desert landscape and aim directly at the Sangre De Cristo Mountains. The anticipation builds relentlessly as the dunes uncover themselves more and more with every approaching mile. Then you realize they are still about 45 minutes away and you chill out and just want to get there before the park closes.

The main highway from Center ends, and you make a right for a few miles before you reach the main entrance to the park. As soon as you make that right, you will see the signs for Colorado Gators. These aren’t your basic billboards with hours of operation and a full color pic. These signs are epic folks art pieces letting you know that Colorado Gators is here and if you don’t like it FUCK OFF! None of the signs actually say “Fuck Off” but they do aggressively seek your attention.

I was driving with my friend Angela after a full day of presentations at Center High school. It was close to 4pm by the time we neared the Dunes. It was mid February and would be getting dark soon. As tantalizing as Colorado Gators seemed, we only had time for one attraction and the Great Sand Dunes won out.

And holy shit, the Great Sand Dunes are rad! It was cold and windy but the sun was shining as we ran up the dunes. You can go all the way to the top if you want but we chose to climb to Instagram level heights. When we finally descended, Colorado Gators was long closed and all hope of getting a souvenir shirt was lost.

A Members Only jacket is quality climbing gear.

Along with the gallons of sand I was finding in every orifice, the fact that I hadn’t gotten to experience Colorado Gators annoyed me. Don’t be confused; I’m glad that we went to the Great Sand Dunes instead. I will take the majesty of a natural wonder over a man made tourist trap any day.  It annoyed me that we didn’t have enough time to do both. This is the kind of country that is often overlooked because it is so very inaccessible. If I wasn’t here for work, I would not be here at all. I knew my odds of coming back were slim.

The next day was our last. We were to do our last presentation and make the trek back to Albuquerque so we could catch a flight back to Chicago. We were to end at 3 but thanks to the double booking of a basketball game, we left closer to 2 o’clock. The highway we took back to ABQ was the same highway that went past Gator Land.

I was calculating how much time we had to stop back at our hotel and get to the airport. By my calculations I would be able to grab a quick bite to eat and be at the airport with just under 2 hours to spare. But now with this extra hour, and with Gator Land being right there…

My philosophy is to not fuck around the last day of a trip. Pack your shit, get to the airport and enjoy what the food court has to offer. Every side trip is an opportunity for a flat tire or yeti attack. This was a particularly draining trip and I wanted to get back to my kiddo. But Gator Land…

Without a word I swung the car over to Colorado Gators. I promised Angela that I just wanted to get a t-shirt then we could get back on the road. Angela is a trooper and she too was intrigued by a large population of gators so far from their natural habitat.

The gravel lot was surrounded by structures of questionable integrity and ponds of murky water. There’s even a hand painted sign warning of the smells you’ll experience. An employee who I will describe as “gruff” was hauling a large coil of chain link fence on his right shoulder and a sledge hammer in his left hand. His biceps didn’t seem to strain at the task. Also, I could see his biceps because he was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. It was 40 degrees.

Once inside the souvenir shop that looked like it could double as the meeting place for the local militia, the clerk slyly coerced us into taking a full tour by asking, “Y’all wanna take the tour?”

We threw $15 at her and she brought us into a small room lined with glass tanks that housed reptiles of all shapes and sizes. She explained that all the animals here were rescues, most of which were kept as pets because people are idiots and don’t think animals will grow. It also made me wonder what the breaking point is for these exotic pet owners. Like is a 40” alligator okay but a 42” alligator is just too much? The rescue aspect made me feel better about the $15 admission. I wasn’t just here being a tourist; I was a charitable patriot.

After 2 minutes our guide said, “On this tour you’ll get to meet some gators and here’s your first one,” and this woman reaches into a tank and pulls out a 3 foot long gator with no jaw restraint whatsoever. Then she had the audacity to ask us if we wanted to hold it.

Dear reader, if you have kept up with this blog you might surmise that I am not a brave person. I do not enjoy unnecessary risk. My best friend in high school had an iguana the same size who tried to eat my toes while watching House Party. Therefore, me and reptiles aren’t copacetic. I can go on with my life knowing I have never held an alligator and not lose any sleep. But this opportunity seemed worth it. It was not a big alligator but when I retell the story of handling it I can leave that detail out. “Oh, you saw a gator on the golf course? That’s cool. I gripped one with my bare hands. Have you ever stared death in the eye? I have and I laughed!”

I psyched myself up and before passing me the gator, the handler said hold on as she held him over a bucket and literally squeezed the piss out of him like he was a bottle of shampoo and she needed every last drop. A quick wipe with Clorox wet nap and I was good to go.

The gator was calm. I tried to be as I held the damp and deceptively heavy creature. Angela took my picture so I could show my son how bad ass I am. Then Angela got in the picture as our guide took pics for what seemed like 3 hours. I swear the gator was looking at me with a side eye that said, “15 more seconds and I’m gonna bite dat ass.” Angela held him and we both received certificates of courage that were stamped by our little pal’s chompers.

This was the first room. We were then free to roam the complex on our own. The buildings are a series of steel framed structures that I imagine will be all the rage in our post-apocalyptic future. Though the buildings were not the coziest of structures they all seemed well built and safe for passage.  The first one contained large tanks filled with tilapia and some of those warning-worthy smells we warned about. From there, the only signage was “BIG GATORS” that had been wiped with a fingertip in the moss and muck that grew on a door. It was not reassuring.

Go die here.

The door took us outside and onto a dirt path that weaved between ponds of various sizes. The only things separating us from the waters was some chain link fence. The gators were not as active because of the cold water but their big asses were still there, mere feet away.  Knowing that gators are cold-blooded creatures, I wondered how they could survive the cold temperatures of Colorado. Turns out the ponds are fed by geothermal springs that help them regulate their systems so they are always outside.

There was some commotion in the big pond that drew our attention. So remember a few paragraphs back when I thought I was bad ass for holding a 3 foot gator? A dude was in the water taking a gator wrestling class. Gator wrestling is a weird thing. It’s like bullfighting. Both tasks seem bad ass on the surface but when you look closer and see the ways in which the animal is handicapped it’s decidedly less bad ass. It’s still dangerous but wholly unnecessary.

Gator Wrasslin'

Beyond the big pond was my main reason for visiting. I am not big on celebrity actors. I’m terrible with their names. To me every actor is, “That guy from the thing with the car chase” or  “The woman who played the secret agent in the one thing and the pilot in the other.” Except for Keanu Reeves, of course.

Chilling in his own pond as ballers are want to do was everyone’s favorite celebrity alligator, Morris. You don’t know Morris? Wrong, you just don’t think you do. Remember the gator that bit off the dude’s hand in Happy Gilmore? That was Morris. Morris also appeared in Dr. Doolittle, Interview With the Vampire, and was on the Tonight Show with the Crocodile Hunter himself, Steve Irwin (bless up).

All we could see was his snout sticking out from under the wall of a building. Disappointing but what else would you expect from a celebrity recluse of his caliber? We were ready to leave when another worker asked us if we had seen the albino gators yet. In fact, we had not. He guided us to another mystery door that led into another dark, humid building. You know that scene at the end of Goodfellas when that guy tells the other dude’s wife to go into the dark storefront and grab a dress and she dips when she realizes he’s setting her up to be killed? I had the feeling we’d be turned into gator chow but an albino gator is an albino gator.

Down the concrete walkway I could see a creature out of its cage, creeping towards us. My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I was relieved to see it was a tortoise. It was a big ass tortoise but still just a tortoise. There were 4 of them and they get to roam free. They were like the pigs of Animal Farm, strutting around like they owned the joint. As promised, we found a tank of albino alligators along with some Nile crocs.

Morris' backside

We also got to see the backside of Morris. While his head was popping out the other side, the rest of his big ass stayed indoors. I could not imagine being the actor that had to work with this monster. If you confronted him in the wild and all he took was your hand, consider yourself lucky.

Thoroughly gator’d out, we made our exit through the gift shop. I could’ve bought a gator jaw but all my bags were carry-on and I did not feel like explaining that shit. I bought my son a Colorado Gators shirt with a splatter of dark red ink on the side to give him the look of being recently bitten because I’m looking to snag some votes in the Dad-of-the-Year 2018 competition. The bonus for buying a shirt is if you come back with the shirt, your admission is free so really it’s an investment.

We crunched through the parking lot, revved up our Hyundai and headed south, back to ABQ with plenty of time to make 2 mandatory stops: Indiana Jones’ boyhood home in Antonto, CO and the Dog House in ABQ.  I was looking forward to not sleeping in the middle seat of a red-eye flight and being overcome with hallucinatory visions of gators splashing down the aisle.

Always got time for my president.

Would I Go Back?

If I was back in the area I would for sure. It’s campy and tourist trappy but I had fun and it was not as exploitative as I thought it would be. It is so close to the Dunes that you’d be dumb to blow past it. You can go for 45 minutes or a couple hours. Alamosa, CO is only 20 minutes away and it’s a cool little city to spend a couple days in. You can camp too, if you’re about that life.