Great Sand Dunes

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Great Sand Dunes National Park

May 3

After a casual breakfast at the Santa Fe AirBnb we set out for Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado. We arrived around 2:00 PM and were immediately amazed by the landscape. The majestic contrast of the flowing Medano Creek in front, and the vast layer of endless sand dunes with the backdrop of  the snowcapped Rocky Mountains was unexpected. The vast layer of endless sand dunes is an awesome sight. There are about 40 square miles of dunes, and they are the tallest dunes in the country.

 

I was lucky to score two nights at the Pinyon Flats Campground in the park.  It’s the only campground in the Park and I had to be strategic about getting online in advance at the right time to get these dates, but I persevered.  This is a full service National Park campground, but no showers.   We found our site and set up camp.  The Visitors Center was under construction so there wasn’t much there for us besides restrooms.  The rangers were available in a trailer outside the center, so we went in to chat with them about hiking options.

Our main objective was to hike the dunes as much as we could, and do some sand dune sledding…it was a bucket list item for Emilie.  It was too late to explore the main dunes on this day so we opted to hike the 2.5-mile out and back Dunes Overlook Trail, and the short spur Point of No Return Trail.  The trailhead for these was out of our campground.  The Dunes Overlook trail was not a difficult hike.  It led us through some of the area’s floral displays while also leading us to some fantastic scenic panoramas of the other-worldly sandy landscape.  It was a great introduction to the dunes.  The hike led us to a viewing point with a bench, which was very nice. But an even better view is about 1/4-mile beyond that where the trail really ends.

It was a hot hike but the views were well worth the effort. Back at the campsite we heated some water and re-hydrated a de-hydrated meal in a bag for dinner.

We roasted marshmallows at the campfire, and then off to bed.

May 4

Just outside the park, about a 10-minute drive from the campground is the Great Sand Dunes Oasis.  This is a privately owned restaurant/campground/gift shop that also rents sleds for sledding down the sand dunes. We drove there to get sleds at about 8:30 AM and also had breakfast there.  Considering they are the only restaurant within 25 miles of the Park, they don’t really need to be that good.  However, it was an excellent hot breakfast served by a very friendly server, and it was reasonably priced. With our stomachs full and our rented sleds in the car, we headed back into the Park for some dune hiking and sledding.

Sledding is allowed pretty much anywhere on the dunes. As with most people, we headed out from the Main Dunes Parking area near the entrance to the Park. It’s about a half-mile hike from the parking area, across Medano Creek, to the nearest sleddable dunes.  We had planned to hike to High Dune as well. It is said to take over two hours to hike to High Dune, but in this blistering heat, and with our primary objective being sledding, and knowing that the views from High Dune really weren’t going to be much different from anywhere along the dunes or from our Overlook hike the day before, we decided fairly quickly to just do some sledding.  We both wore our water shoes.  They were just right for crossing the creek and walking in the sand dunes right after.

It took us about 20 minutes of trekking in the sand before we got to some high points we could sled from.  The sledding turned out to be much more difficult than we had imagined.  Our sleds, as well as the sleds of others, just didn’t consistently slide very well down the dunes.  We got a couple of decent rides each, but they took a lot of effort to stay upright without tumbling. We could have gone down more steep dunes for more speed but we were concerned about getting hurt, like others had.  Well, we had a ball trying to sled, with some degree of success.

However, the most epic sled of the day was one by Emilie that I did not get on video.  It was epic due to the amazing 3x head over heel tumble Emilie took as she wiped out about 10 seconds into the ride. Somehow, she did not get hurt, but she was covered head to toe in sand. Since she wasn’t hurt…it was hilarious!

After about an hour of sledding and covering ourselves head to toe in sand (especially Emilie), we headed out.  We returned the sleds to the Oasis.  On our way back to the campground we made the decision to leave Great Sand Dunes National Park instead of staying our second night.  The driver behind this decision was that Emilie NEEDED to get into a shower to get the sand off of, and out of, her body! With no showers in the campground, we folded up camp and headed towards home via Kansas.

About 5 hours out we landed at a Sleep Inn and Suites in Garden City, Kansas…a town that grossly smelled like cattle feed lots. But it was a good jumping off point for visiting Monument Rocks Chalk Pyramids about 1.5 hours away.

Em happily jumped into the motel shower and emerged about 30 minutes later…only to realize that she still had sand in her ears.  It would take two more showers over the next few days before all the sand was finally off of her!!

Off to bed.

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