Great Sand Dunes National Park

From Nebraska, we drove across the many flat roads of Kansas. (Sandra, I think we found the perfect road for you to use when checking the speedometer on that new sports car of yours...) I started and finished a Sidney Sheldon novel and Mike drove a 480 mile day, and then we were in Blanco, Colorado. The next morning, we set off to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. We knew that we would see the largest pile of sand in North America, but we had no idea what a truly adventurous day we would have. We were told that to really get a feel for the sand dunes, we needed to climb to the top of the 700 feet pile visible from the visitor's center.

Since we were at 7500 feet elevation and that makes breathing harder for Mike and since I am just plain lazy, we quickly decided to forget the top and see what else there was to do in the park.
It didn't take us long to find just what we were looking for. A ranger told us there was a 11 mile, 4-wheel drive only road that would pass through many different terrains

and provide some amazing views.

We had been told that there were three water crossings before we got out of the park and that we needed to stay to the right on the third one as it was "a bit deep right now". By the time we hit pavement again, we had crossing 12 streams. Fun, but always a little unnerving. The water did come over the running boards on #3.

The sand proved to be a bigger challenge.


At one point, we were in 4low and still not going anywhere quickly. Now that was fun, the curves and sand combined to make it a better thrill than a Valley Fair ride. Mike is a very good driver!

I loved this sign; you can't say we weren't warned.

The colors, at times, looked like spring with purples and yellows and pale greens.

The terrain changed and the views changed frequently. The aspen trees are showing their beautiful gold colors now and as we rose in elevation, they were more prevalent. We kept an eye out for wildlife. The ranger had talked to hunters in the preserve that had seen 20 long horn sheep pass through their campground the night before. We didn't see any.

There was evidence of a wildfire in 2009.

And the creek crossing became more and more interesting the farther we traveled along the path.

This was another sign you don't see every day.

Before long, we were driving along side the aspen that we had seen at a distance when we started so I had to check elevation

and "Hotlips" said:

WOW, nearly 10,000 feet! The blank part under Nearest Address said it all. After 11 miles of driving in national park and preserve, we traveled through another 11 miles of private land that was definitely PRIVATE. I would love to be related to this Wolf; they must own a million acres in this part of Colorado. Again, the views changed

and we were in a pine forest.

Mike did spot a big buck posing for us along the road, but I was too slow, or too noisy, to get a good picture.

Once we hit pavement, we headed south with really little idea of where we were. But, we soon saw a sign that lead us down another unpaved road and eventually back to a road number we recognized. Along that county road, we spotted an old school. By this time, we had been on the road for 5 hours and covered somewhere between 30 and 40 miles; now that is a good day of "Jeeping".

But we weren't done yet.