May 24, 2021 - Day Five, Flight Three
Great Sand Dunes
I approach the Great Sand Dunes.   Lynnette and I had been here in the car back in November.  All the activity and Visitor Center are at the southeast corner of the park, so I headed for the northwest corner.
   
Starting to see some sand.
   
And there they are!
   
I cruised back and forth over the dunes.  They were deserted as I knew they would be, having hiked up a single 700 foot dune at the southest edge in November and knowing how difficult that was.
   
Looking south.
   
These gigantic sand dunes are really quite amazing.
   
A close-up of Crestone Peak (I think).
   
Departing the dunes, I headed west again across the valley.
   
 
   
Approaching Astronaut Kent Rominger Airport (KRCV).
   

I stopped here to get fuel at a decent price and borrow their courtesy car to go into town -- Del Norte -- for lunch.  But I got to talking with an airport regular at the fuel pump and he invited me to ride with him into town for lunch.  A nice guy.  Over lunch, he told me Astronaut Rominger was a home town boy who still flew general aviation and was active at the airport.

I had been thinking Kent Rominger was that Astronaut who was on Big Bang Theory a few times, but I looked him up on Wikipedia and that wasn't him.  But Rominger was/is impressively accomplished: an a Navy F-14 pilot, attended Topgun, earned a Masters Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School -- both he and I were there at the same time but I our paths didn't cross -- a test pilot at Patuxent River, operations officer of an F-14 squadron and flew in Desert Storm, five Shuttle flights and holds the Space Shuttle Orbiter flight time record with 1610 hours, Chief of the Astronaut Office and Navy Captain.  Not bad!
   

The airport had a nice little pilot's shack.

 
   
 
   
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