The plan for Monday was to head a couple hours west to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Monica and her family had been there when she was little (where haven’t they been?), but the grand-children and sons-in-law have never visited.
As you approach the dunes from a long, flat, straight road leading to the park, you see them in the distance and they seem like a moderately sized pile of sand in front of some mountains. Great. We drove all this way to play in a sandbox? As you get closer, however, you begin to realize that they don’t call them dunes for nothing. Of course there is a visitor center where you learn why this particular place in the world is home to over 30 acres of sand and the accompanying dunes – the wind currents and the placement of the specific mountain ranges are just right to dump these tiny pebbles right here. From a distance you can also see visitors making their way up and down the dunes…some of them climbing to the top! Let me reiterate that these are not small hills. These are massive dunes, hundreds of feet high. We find out that you can take about a two-hour guided tour to the top. (Guided? Really? You’re at the bottom. Climb to the top. How hard can it be?) Nobody was really up for that – we were at the park at mid-day and with my sandals on I can attest that the sand was freakishly hot. After walking through the unexpected small creek at the base of the dunes, we did manage to climb and rest at the top of some of the lower, front dunes.
Some of the visitors brought sleds to try and glide down the dunes. That didn’t work so well. Mostly they just sank in too far to go anywhere.
Instead of taking the same route back to the cabin, we decided to circle around both of the Spanish Peak mountains to complete the loop. It took a little while longer than anticipated, but we saw some great scenery along the way.