Brake Lights & Bug Bites

We are a few days behind on the posts because we did not have wifi while in the parks.

We spent two days at Great Sand Dunes. On Wednesday, we stopped at the visitor center and got a lay of the land. Tate was in all his glory when we set his feet in the sand and let him run, roll, throw and eat sand! Thursday, we picked up our sand sleds and sand boards and went straight to exploring the dunes.

As we were driving to the dunes, I was thinking of how I would explain the sand dunes to you. Huge. Beautiful. Adventure. Diverse landscape. The adjectives were running through my head.

After 3 hours on the dunes, a whole different set of adjectives were running through my head! Exhausted. Sweaty. Sandy. Hot. Sun burned. Sandy. Burnt feet. Sandy.. Thirsty. Did I mention we were covered in sand?!?

Now that I’ve showered and relaxed in the air conditioning (and vacuumed up a lot of sand), I think back on our experience fondly. We had an absolute blast! We laughed and giggled. We encouraged one another one. We pushed when we were tired.

Against the backdrop of rugged 14,000’ mountain peaks stand the tallest dunes in North America, up to 750 feet tall. The park offers diverse landscapes from dunes to forests to wetlands to tundra!

Sandboarding and sand-sledding are a popular activity at the dunes so, of course, we had to give it a try. It was so fun! After several falls and mouthfuls of sand, the boys got the hang of sandboarding. I stuck to the sand sled! We kept climbing to higher and higher dunes to race faster and faster down the sand! We raced, we crashed, we laughed, we laid exhausted on the sand after another hike up the dune.

We also watched several people walk past us with their eyes set on reaching the tallest dune, Star Dune. We had climbed fairly high searching for the next biggest hill to race down so Star Dune wouldn’t be too hard to reach. Boy were we wrong! The sand hills were much steeper the closer we got and we were already tired from the many sand-sledding runs. We didn’t make it all the way to the top of Star Dune, but we did climb fairly high which awarded us with beautiful views! Hot, exhausted and out of water, we hiked/sledded back down to the truck.

We stopped at the visitor center on the way out of the park for the boys to earn another Junior Ranger badge and a few little souvenirs! If you know me, I love souvenirs! I am trying to be self-controlled with my purchases now that we live in a camper! Ha! We could not wait to get home and shower! So refreshing!

We were challenged, but the challenge was worth it! The views. The memories. The laughter. The experience! It was worth it!

Tomorrow we continue our National Park adventure with Mesa Verde-Grant’s #1 request!