I’m a little behind getting these posts up from Mom and my’s trip to southern Colorado a couple weeks ago.  We had such a wonderful time, and I will remember this trip for a very long time.  There was so much to see and do, and we packed in as much as we could over our three days.  I wouldn’t change a thing!

We took off south just before dawn, hoping to get through Denver rush hour traffic before it got bad.  So far, I’ve yet to leave the house early enough to actually avoid Denver traffic, so I’m starting to think that there is no such thing as “no rush hour.”  We crept through downtown, but this allowed Mom a chance to get a picture of Sports Authority Field and Mile High, which sits right along the highway.  Finally, we cleared the traffic and zipped south, stopping in Colorado Springs to get breakfast.  After weeks of on and off icky, rainy, cloudy weather, we were in glorious blue skies.  What a mood-lightener that was!

Then there was this, in the parking lot of the McDonald’s.

We are just not sure what was going on there.  Had they guy camped in the parking lot overnight?  Or did the tent just stay on there all the time and he was an off-roader/off-gridder?  Hard to say, and we did not see him (her?) leave.  The truck was gone when we came back out.

When Mom had brought up going to the Great Sand Dunes, I was dubious.  It didn’t sound fun or spectacular.  But I’m glad we made the drive, which was close to 5 hours.  Seeing sand dunes loom up out of the flat lands against the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, with no warning, was breathtaking.

As we drove, we passed mountain ranges like this one:

There was evidence as we drove of the snow that the mountains had received in the previous days.  In fact, when we got to the Great Sand Dunes, we found actual snow.  We were at about 9,000 feet, although peaks in the park top 13,000 feet.  This snow patch was about as big as my hand.  I told Mom it was my first snow of the season!

The visitor’s center:

I want to mention the visitor’s center, because it was unique unto itself.  What looks like windows along the sides of the building are actually passive solar collection points.  Behind the panels, warm air is trapped and fed throughout the building to heat it in the colder months.  Deep overhangs over doorways keep the interior cool in the hottest part of the summer.  It was chilly when we were there, in the upper 50’s and low 60’s, with a breeze.  But summers there can get very warm, often over 90 degrees.

After leaving the visitor center, you take a small road downhill to the sand dunes themselves.  Summer activities in the area include swimming in Medano Creek.  The creek washes the sand south, and winds pick it up and put it back on the dunes, in a perpetual rebuilding of the dunes.  This time of year, the creek is quite low, and you simply walk across it to get to the dunes.

You would think that would have been slimy and slippery, but Mom, me, and little Sophie the dog walked right across it.  The water was no more than a half-inch deep this time of year.  In the summer it is considerably deeper.  The dry sand was much harder to walk in than the wet sand.

The oddest thing was seeing the sand dunes laid right up against the mountains, as if they had been brought in by truck.  The wind that adds sand to the dunes makes them tiny bits taller every day, so the sand dunes are still “growing.”  The tallest is about 750 feet, but they change shape every day, so elevations change, as well.  People were walking to the top, some kids were even “sledding” down on sleds they’d carried up with them.  We did see two young men taking snowboards up with them, but we didn’t get to see them come down.  We assumed they had gone to the other side.  Mom and I only climbed a few feet up one dune.  The sand was very hard to walk in.

For me, just sitting on the sand and looking at the view was enough. It was like being in a huge sandbox.

Sophie enjoyed it with me, but this was about as still as she ever got.  She had a blast running around us as we walked or sat.

From our sitting vantage point, the opposite mountains were covered in color – green pines, red and grey granite, yellow aspen, and snow at the top.

After we had roasted ourselves in the sun, we drove around the rest of the park, taking a look at the campground.  This is the view back toward the dunes.  What a fabulous place to camp!

We thought we would take a little walk on the loop trail off the campground, but there were several male deer hanging about, and it is rutting season, so we decided against it.

It was a wonderful day, filled with things we hadn’t seen before, talking to some very entertaining and amusing park rangers and volunteers, and just enjoying the sun and sand, with no ocean in sight!  Because of the time of year, there were no crowds, and while the drive was long, it was beautiful and not difficult.  I’m glad we decided to go.

And, there was a bit of a bonus!  I love old abandoned buildings, and anytime I can get a close look, I  do it!  I like to imagine the history, the family that lived there, the work that was done there.  This was a small farmstead right alongside the road as we traveled.  I don’t remember exactly where, unfortunately.

Someone got creative with a skull…

 

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