Day 4 - Southwest National Parks Adventure

9/27/202

After driving down a dark, bumpy and kind of cow smelly road last night we were thrilled to wake up and discover we were surrounded by beautiful prairie. We were in a little clearing we had all to ourselves. While eating breakfast we were surprised to see a man ride by on a bike. We thought, now that looks fun. So we got the bikes down and headed out on a two track road into the prairie. It was wonderful and something we definitely can’t do in Michigan. The last of the wildflowers were blooming and birds singing.

The trail reminded me of the ones you see in movies about the Oregon Trail. I was seeing the landscape as the pioneers would have seen it. Of course where my view was interrupted by a ranch or oil well off in the distance, their’s would have been strewn with abandoned wagons and make shift graves, I’m happy to be a 21 century traveler.

As we continue west, we moved from prairie to the plains, where the deer and the antelope play, we saw some of both, along with some prairie dogs.

We arrived at Great Sand Dunes National Park at 3:30. Our first national park of the trip. We could see the dune well before we entered the park. I was expecting it to rise out of the plains, it doesn’t, it’s resting among the mountains, and it’s huge.

The best place to make your first stop at any national park is the visitors center. We explored the display about the dune and the creatures that call it home and got some advice about hikes from a very helpful ranger. We are camping in the park at the Piñon Flats Campground and have a great site with views of the dunes and the mountains.

We can walk to the dune from our campsite, so after getting the camper dumped and situated we headed out to explore.

There aren’t designated trails on the dunes, you can walk wherever you want. We could see ant sized people up on the high peaks. It was beautiful and unique beyond my being able to explain, I’ll let the pictures do that.

Walking on loose sand is hard work, so we only walked about 1/2 mile into the dunes before turning and retracing our steps, but our steps were gone, the wind had already turned them back into ripples of sand. No worries, we could still see the campground resting on the hillside.

We attended an interesting ranger talk about the dark sky’s in the evening, but it’s too cloudy for stars tonight.