Great Sand Dunes !

 

This week Scruffy and I headed to Great Sand Dunes National Park for our days off.  We got here yesterday around 11 and joined the folks circling the campgrounds looking for empty spaces (wishful thinking) or someone who was packing up. I snagged a good spot and with the current owners permission left my tag on the post and headed off to park my rig in a parking lot with a nice view. We opened the windows to catch the breeze and ate lunch while waiting for the 1 pm checkout.  We made it back to our site just in time to unhitch in the pouring rain.

After the rain cleared, I decided to hike to Zapata Falls, which was labeled – point of interest - on the road to the National Park. Four miles on the very rough road, was enough to cause Scruffy to roll his eyes and say,“what were you thinking.” Now, I am not sure whether it was the falls, or the road that was the POI. We did have a nice hike, and the creek was beautiful, but the falls did not appear to be falling. A little farther up the road we found a BLM campground with 

great views.

This morning we both watched out the back window as some deer browsed in our fire pit. They went through the campground cleaning up. When they left so did we, heading out for our morning walk. We followed the trail down from the campground through an area of old dunes that are now stabilized by vegetation to the Medano creek that runs down from the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the north and east and around the dunes to the Southwest. 

Scruffy's favorite part of hike is finding bushes to mark.

The creek carries sand and deposits it in the southwest where the wind picks it up and blows it onto the dunes.

I  planned to hike in the dunes after breakfast before the sand heated up but the raw natural beauty called out to be left alone. The magnificence was inspiring and looking was enough.