Great Sand Dunes

Colorado! The further North we go, the better the states get. We left Taos in the afternoon, and pulled into Alamosa in the early evening. We passed through the San Luis Valley, where they have some of the highest UFO sightings in the world. The Native Americans say the valley is the mouth of the Earth, where the Earth speaks to the rest of the universe (I may have just made that up). Anyways, BOY, was it cold. 24 degrees to be exact. Our summer dresses and shorts are definitly not doing us anything, except make us look dumb. We did our best to stay warm and get some sleep for the next big day.

So the Great Sand Dune National Park didn't exactly get us at hello. We wouldn't have even gone unless we needed to stop and break up the trip through Colorado.  When we asked the guy at the RV camp we stayed at about it, his response was "Well, it's just a lot of sand, man." We had pretty low expectations.
Turns out the Great Sand Dune National Park is pretty cool. Once you get past that it's just a lot of sand, it was really pretty. The park is in a valley, up against the snow capped mountains. So turn your head one way and you are in the mountains, turn it the other way and you are in the desert. WEIRD.

The highest of the dunes is a little over 750 ft, and most people were walking up to the top. So of course Lin and I weren't going to be out-fitnessed by a bunch of old Germans, we're going to the top darnit. We walked and walked up and down and flat. You know that feeling when you are walking out on to the beach for the first time, and you are tired but you don't care because you are so excited about the ocean? It was kind of like that but with no climax. No ocean. Just more uphill sand dune walking. We made it about 150-200 ft up and the Germans with the walkers were passing us. Not really, but I feel like the Germans as a nation are exceptionally fit. Keep in mind we've been sitting in a car for four weeks. We called it a day.

We headed back to the car, shook out our boots and continued North.