What You Need to Know BEFORE you visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park

After our attempt to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park was thwarted by the hot sand yesterday afternoon, we were up early today. We moved the motor home from its boondocking spot on BLM land, and parked it beside the road close to the national park entrance. We were there even before the gate attendant this morning, because we knew how important it is to beat the warming effects of the sun.

During wetter months of the year, Mark would be standing in the Medano Creek in the picture above. But the river that flows at the base of the dunes is dry in July. That made for a long walk across flat sand before we finally got into the dunes.

We had our eye on a dune peak that we wanted to conquer this morning and we started up that ridgeline. We learned that climbing a steep sand dune is much harder than hiking a trail. As you can see, we've came a long ways from that band of trees where we parked the car. What you might not be able to see is that this steep section was brutal! Denisa is gasping for air this morning!

But once we conquered our peak, it was easier to make our way across some of the other tall ridge lines to other parts of the dunes.

These are the tallest sand dunes in North America, and even from the peak it looks like there is no end to the miles of dunes around us. We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

As we look back to the edge of the dunes where we started walking, we can see tiny dots close to the line of trees. 

Those tiny dots are the crowds of people that were just like us yesterday--arriving later in the day because they are uneducated about how this sand heats up so quickly in the summer.

At the top, it was fun to walk where no one had walked before--or at least since the last wind storm erased all the foot prints.

The last time we visited these dunes many years ago was on a windy day. Our only memory of that day was the sting of getting sand-blasted as we tried to climb our first dune. Today there is only a slight breeze, and it's still relatively cool.

There are miles of dunes to climb, but we chose our section based on its proximity to the mountains. From here we can see the Sangre de Cristo range that helps to form these dunes.

We can zoom into see some details of the 12,000-foot peak looking down on us.

The national park brochure says that the prevailing winds carry the sand that originated from the San Juan Mountains to the west, and lays it right against the Sangre De Cristo mountains to the east. The mixed color and size of the grains of sand give clues to which mountains range they came from.

It's hard to capture the steepness of these dunes, but Denisa is standing on the edge of a 100-foot-drop off. She has been experimenting on the best footwear for the dunes. Yesterday we tried Keen sandals, and they let all that blistering hot sand in and then held it against our scorched feet. Today we started out in socks and hiking boots, and Mark liked that option best. Denisa also tried crocs, but they weren't any better than sandals. Now she is barefoot, and that's her favorite--until the sun heats up the sand again.

It's now 10:00, and the sand is getting warm, so we're making our way back to the car. But we stopped on a mostly clear slope to tramp a heart-shaped sentiment in the sand. This national park can be a lot of fun if you know that you must come early in the day during the summer. It can also be a lot of exercise. Even though we walked less than four miles today, our legs feel like it was double that in effort. Walking and climbing in the sand is a good cardio workout so we learned that we need to bring lots of water!

We were leaving The Great Sand Dunes National Park today at 11:00, about the same time that we arrived yesterday. We counted almost 50 cars waiting in line to enter, and we wanted to tell them all that the sand was going to be too hot to enjoy the park now. We wish we could have warned them to come before 8:00 a.m. like we did.

We picked up the motor home on the side of the road by the entrance. That's when we found out that Mark had left his backpack hanging on our bicycle rack on the back of the car when we left the park. A good Samaritan saw it fall off when we crossed a speed bump, and took the trouble to chase us down and return it. Thanks! We continued our route northward further into Colorado. As we drove west of the national park, we got a distant view of the size of the light-colored sand dunes next to those tall dark Rocky Mountains. As high as it felt we climbed today in the sand, the mountain peaks are so much taller.

It was a good morning of playing in the sand, and we feel educated now on what we needed to know BEFORE we visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park.