June 20: I got to the Great Sand Dunes Oasis (a campground just outside the park) around 5:30PM on the 19th. This place is amazing. It provided me a shower, laundry service and a restaurant. It was unbelievable. As soon as I got there, I showered and ate dinner in the restaurant. On the 20th I got to the park visitor center around 830AM (Got my book stamped) and talked to the park volunteer about the different hikes. The mosquitoes are really bad right now around the park so anything that wasn’t in the dunes was a no-no. I decided to hike to the “High Dune”. Notice the name is High Dune and not “Highest Dune” as there is a taller dune somewhere in the park but a much further walk from the visitor center. Trudging up sand to the High Dune was tiring and took me about an hour to go up those 600+ ft. It took me about 10 seconds to run down them. Running down sand dunes is my new favorite hobby. I even walked a good ways back up the dunes just to run back down them.
The dunes are bizarre. They don’t belong in the surrounding scenery of mountains and wetlands. They seem to come out of nowhere, for no reason. Of course there is a reason but I won’t bore you with it. It involves erosion, wind, water/stream location and mountain pass location. Sometimes learning why things are, the way they are makes them less interesting so I’ll just look at, hike and especially, run down them.
Tomorrow I’ll stop at the same outdoor sports door I stopped at on Saturday to, hopefully, repair my tent (Oh, also the sole of my hiking boot fell off today running down the dunes so I have to replace those. I have had those for 5 years and several long hiking trips so I was probably due. Glad I found out now.), then onto Moab Utah. I wanted to try to squeeze in some things in Western Colorado including Mesa Verde NP and the San Juan Mountains but I will have to come back I guess. There is a lot to see in Utah and my first anchor point of my trip in Glacier National Park in Montana is fast approaching. Until next time.
Matthew