Great Sand Dunes

The Great Sand Dunes National Park was awesome!  The first night we ate dinner and decided to go check out the sand dunes.  The park is open 24 hours.  We went to check out the visitor center (which was closed), and I was telling the boys to get next to the sign so I could take a pic.  Then I noticed Ben was still in the Jeep.  Went back to see what was the holdup, and he was having a nose bleed.  Took him back to clean him up and finally made it out to the dunes.  It was so cold out there with the wind.  The dunes are incredible.  It's hard to believe there are these giant sand dunes in the middle of the mountains.  I did stop to read a sign in the parking lot about the geology, but I was literally attacked by mosquitos. 

The next day we rented a sand sled and sandboard (like a snowboard) to ride on the dunes.  The sandboard was the bigger hit.  The boys had no problem doing it, and Chuck did pretty well on it, too.  I, on the other hand, had a little trouble working up the nerve to go down the dune.  Something about being accident prone and breaking bones makes me a chicken in my old age. I did do a smaller dune and went a little way before falling.  My hip was sore the next day.  Did I mention I'm old?  I have some videos of everyone sandboarding, but I can't get them to work here, so I'll just put more pics.

Waxing the boards

One day we took the Jeep on the Medano Pass Primitive Road in the park.  There are signs everywhere saying high-clearance, four-wheel drive vehicles only, but we went in behind 2 minivans (which we quickly passed), and we even saw a Mini-Cooper at a parking area along the road.  We went pretty far along the road.  There was deep sand in spots, many creek crossings, rocky roadbed, and some really cool scenery!  

There was one wilderness area we parked at on the way up the road.  There was a really steep dune that the boys went over to check out.  I found out later it is 399' tall.  We only let the boys go up about 15'.  On the way back down the road, they wanted to stop there again.  There was a Girl Scout troop (Ben's age), and some of those girls were all the way at the top!  We had given the boys a time limit but told them not to go any higher than before.  Of course when they saw those others, they just kept going.  We talked to the adults with the girls and they assured us it was completely safe.  Zack & Ben turned around just shy of the top so they could make their time limit.  We went back our last night after the thunderstorm and they made it all the way to the top.  Chuck made it pretty high up but I think psyched himself out about coming down.  That certainly was my problem.  I probably made it 15'.  It's so steep it looks like if you fall coming down you are a goner, but since it's sand you just sink in.  The boys ran all the way down.  They did not tell us that the sand makes a crazy noise when you are running down.  I was like, is there a bear up there?

That's a long way up.

I may have overused the saturate button on this one.

One day we went to Zapata Falls, which is on BLM and state land.  It's a fairly long ride up the mountain on a very bumpy road, and then 1/4 mile hike to a creek.  Then you have to walk in the creek through a crevasse to see the waterfall.  We went along the edge of the creek until we could no longer, then used stepping stones in the creek, and then we had to wade in the creek the last little bit.  Did I mention there is still snow on the mountains?  The water was pretty numbing on the feet, but it didn't take too long to warm back up.  We did a little exploring around the creek, and Ben & I headed down to the parking lot.  We waited and waited, and finally Chuck & Zack came down.  Apparently Zack had stuck his hand on a cactus and Chuck had pulled all the spines out he could.  We could still see some, but they are not coming out any time soon.