The personal and professional website of Douglas Van Bossuyt
Our trusty steed, a 1988 4runner with the 22RE motor and all stock aside from the tube doors and tube bumper.
What a truck, what a truck!
Getting ready to head up the road to Hayden Pass. What an amazing valley.
The long, straight road.
The sloping valley floor. An old lake bed.
Big storms grumbled around us as we got ready to head up the hill.
At the end of the good road before the start of the bad road.
Big storm coming from the west.
Heading up some very loose, scrambly, steep trail. There were some big stair steps that were close to the limit of my little stock truck but we still made it up and over even in the driving rain.
On top of the summit.
Coming down the other side we found the mountain full of flowers.
A muddy but very driveable road.
Rain passing over the Sangre de Cristo Range.
Heading over some shelf road.
Beautiful!
Waiting out the rain before looking for a campsite.
Our campsite partway down the mountain.
All you really need is a truck.
Sunset on the mountain.
We stopped off at the Colorado Gators Reptile Park on the way north. It is an old tilapia growing facility that now mostly houses reptiles and other exotic animals. The alligators were brought in back in the 80s to eat the leftover tilapia guts.
It really is an integrated ecosystem in the desert.
An interesting collection of signs out in front of the entrance.
This place is not responsible for eaten children!
Heather holding a corn snake!
Petting a tortoise!
A little lizard of some sort. What a cutie!
Heather being brave with a three or four foot long alligator. Hew was really polite and let us pet him!
Folks wrestling alligators to do medical checks.
A gator swimming around with a bunch of tilapia.
Gators relaxing out of the water.
Time to pull another one in to have a medical check.
Gator wrastling!
Alligators can be popcicles and still come back to life.
In the new greenhouse. This is where the tilapia poop water gets cycled through hydroponics facilities to be cleaned.
A tank full of tilapia.
I imagine this is how a post-apocalyptic food source would look.
A rescued cockatoo or parrot now lives in the greenhouse.
This could be straight out of Mad Max.
A BIG gator in his own pen.
Lots of gators laying around.
Pea green soup.
Emus!
Albino alligators.
An evil caiman.
Big fellow who used to star in movies.
Emu eating. What an odd place!
