National Parks Adventure: Great Sand Dunes

Thursday, June 6th was another day of driving south through Colorado. We took a different route than we had taken north a week before, and saw some really interesting sights and towns along the way. One traffic jam was caused by a cattle drive!

Sorry about the large bug splat on the window, but I just thought this was the neatest thing to see in 2019!

We reached some super high elevations and went through the town of Leadville. Chris was excited to see it because of its importance in the history of Doc Holliday, someone Chris had been reading about. Also, Leadville is the highest incorporated city in North America, which you certainly could see by all the snow still piled on the ground.

When planning this adventure and scouting out viable places to stay, I found a place near Great Sand Dunes National Park called Sand Dunes Swimming Pool & RV Park. It had great reviews and was already mostly full when I reserved it last November! The only RV sites available were "dry" sites, which had no hook-ups for water or sewer. I quickly reserved the dry sites for the two nights we would be there! 

As we began to approach our destination, we found ourselves in the flattest, most barren stretch of land I have ever witnessed. Y'all, I grew up in Texas and have driven through west Texas and the Panhandle, and I'm telling you... nothing compares to this endless stretch of road through no-man's-land. We were between two mountain ranges but the road stretched before us endlessly... it was eerie. Drew and Jamie started laughing, questioning where in the world I was taking everyone. We passed some sketchy looking "RV parks" that got us all quite worried. 

After an eternal 30 miles on an unchanging highway, we turned off toward our RV park... which looked like a strange little oasis in the middle of nothing. Here is the satellite image of our destination:

It was SO STRANGE but we could see the sand dunes, we managed to figure out how to fill up our water tanks, and the swimming pool looked promising. An added bonus: the location in the middle of this flat expanse made for beautiful skies and awesome thunderstorms that rolled in that evening! We drove to the National Park after dinner in hopes of catching the ranger program, but some big storms came through so we had to turn right around and head back. The park seemed so close because you could see it clearly, but the drive there was an interminable 39 minutes!

We picked up our sand sled rentals from the RV park front office the next morning, then piled back in the cars for that maddening drive back to the park.

The sand dunes set against the mountain range was quite an unusual sight.

Finally, we arrived! We brought picnic supplies, lawn chairs, swim gear, and our sand sleds. After parking way up the road from an overfilled parking lot, we had to wade through the hypothermia-inducing Medano Creek just to access the sand dunes! That was a sight to see, with all of us laden by our gear.

I took the next panoramic photo after we crossed the seasonal creek--it shows how the creek flows, dividing the mountains from the sand dunes. 

After a steep hike up one of the closer and smaller dunes, we waxed the boards and tried them out!

There was a lot of trial-and-error, but we finally figured out some tricks!

Sand dunes rule: you sled down, you carry that sucker back up! What a workout!

Astonishing scenery!

Someone needs to teach my dad about "Hang 10." 

After we wore ourselves out on the dunes, we walked over to the edge of the creek to set up our chairs and bust out some sandwiches. Despite the frigid spring water, Audrey didn't waste much time changing into her swimsuit and plunging in!

Medano Creek is unique because of a rare phenomenon called "surge flow," in which water flows in bursts that cause waves on the sand. Here, the waves can reach a foot high at the peak time of year... which happened to be when we visited! According to koaa.com, surge flow is so rare because few environments have the elements needed to produce the waves. Medano Creek has a steep gradient, enough water and a sandy creekbed.

No one else would submerge themselves in the snow melt!

After awhile, Chris and I started eyeing some of the bigger sand dunes and wondering whether it would be worth it to climb one and sled down. Hiking up those soft sand dunes is nothing to sneeze at, let me tell you! We decided, why not?

In person, it looks even higher!

I had my phone so I captured Chris sledding down a big dune before I gave it a go. When it was my turn, the sled stopped near the base of the dune before my body did, so I skidded along several feet past the sled and had a lovely sandpaper-like burn on my rear to show for it. OUCH!

The tiny speck behind me is Chris

After I got down, Chris hiked back up for another go. 

Whew! What a day! Before leaving the park, we stopped at the Visitor Center so the kids could, of course, earn those junior ranger badges!

When we got back to our campers, we had to try out the hot springs pool that was part of the RV park. Again, we were mystified by all the people at the pool--where did these people come from??? There's nothing around! We stepped into the pool, which that day was 96 degrees, and what a strange sensation. It was like being in a huge hot tub. The ambient air temperature was somewhere in the upper 70s, but the pool was so warm that you occasionally had to stand up and feel the cool air against your skin to refresh you. It had a couple of diving boards, which led to great entertainment by some teenage boys who were one-upping each other. Noah and Audrey took a few turns themselves, and also tried out the little rock slide area made for kids. After a relaxing swim, we made dinner and had s'mores around our little grill fire while the kids played with some neighbor kids.