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Great Sand Dunes National Monument In 1994, Sandy and I were doing one of our "drive around in a BIG circle and stop at anything and everything interesting" trips. This time, it was a loop from Saskatoon, starting going south through the Dakotas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, finally curving back north through Utah, Wyoming and home again. About 5 thousand miles in 12 days. People don't really believe us when we say this is fun, but it IS. While driving south in Colorado, Sandy and I read about the largest sand dunes in North America. (to keep the driver amused, the navigator reads passages from a guide book. This time we had "Let's Go USA" on hand, and found it very useful.) So, we headed on down to a campsite listed, and as usual, set up our tent late at night. When morning arrived, we were finally able to see where we were.
Early morning. We showered, packed up and headed off to the dunes. Only a few miles away, they were quite visible from our campsite. The literature advised climbing the dunes before the heat of the day arrived, advice which proved to be accurate.
View of the dunes from our campsite. We got there and started off across the sand towards the dunes. It took longer than expected, and the dunes started looking bigger and bigger. Originally, we had planned to hike up wearing our "hiking sneakers", but once we took them off to cross Medano Creak, we discovered how much nicer it was to be in bare feet.
Sandy starts up We continued climbing to the next peak. Over and over. It also seemed that each step had to be done over and over as well: 3/4's of each step was lost as your foot would slide back down the slope in the soft sand. We saw two groups of people carrying skis or snowboards. We hung around and waited until we finally saw one guy go down. He had a hard time just keeping the board moving. Too much friction or the dunes weren't steep enough. Definately not worth the effort.
The people below are getting smaller and smaller. At each peak, Sandy said the next one would be the last one for her. But, a little pudgy 10 year old girl gave Sandy the incentive to continue on to the peak... Sandy's competetive streak was not willing to be outdone by this little girl. The sun was getting higher, and the sand was getting hotter. It was too hot to walk barefoot on the sunny side of the dunes, so we tried to keep our feet on the shady side of the ridges.
On top of the highest dune. Once at the top, we admired the view, and then headed back down. We ran down several of the dunes just for the fun of it, then soaked our feet in the stream at the base. By this time, the summer heat had arrived in force and we were soaked in sweat. We got into our non-airconditioned car and drove back to our campground for another shower.
The goats met us at the showers. Links to other info and pictures:
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Return to the Welcome Page (click on smaller, bordered pictures for an enlarged view) Warren&Sandy's Home is here Mail Me warren.long@shaw.ca |
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