Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

 Wow This is our 61st of 63 National parks in the contiguous US National park. The 2 we missed are both islands that we couldn't get on the ferry. lol .....but they are islands, so do they count?? It is still a big bucket list milestone for us. But we will go to the 2 islands some day.

First lets start with breakfast. Peach pie from Capital Reef NP, with sharp Mexican cheese and plain Greek yogurt!...oh, I may have added a dollop of whipped cream. We still have a few frozen in our freezer for home.

Leaving Gunnison the left over snow left these really cool bands on the mountain ridges. It looks like someone painted them


The drive to Great sand dunes took us over the continental divide!




We went up to around 8000 ft and then the earth turned in to a few hundred miles of flat grazing lands.

 We went up MANY switchbacks to the Continental divide over 11000 ft!!


We stopped at a tiny diner and I had a yak burger, raised locally, homemade bun, and local potatoes! it was a fun experience. tasty too. I just love small town America!!

First site of the sand dunes! Hard again to grasp the massiveness. The dunes are 750 feet tall!!!!! 
View from our campsite!



Sunset from our campsite. Zoom in on the picture below. A group of people climbed the 750 foot dune to watch the sunset!



The people look like ants!
This looks like the desert I always expected but never saw. Every other desert has been more lush. I think this is just early in the season, plus this was the driest winter on record for Colorado. That's huge!

We started day 2 with a hearty breakfast of steak potato home fries , scrambled eggs, and our LAST grapefruit! :(

We did a few hikes in the forests and found a few flowers. and a waterfall.

On the way to a waterfall hike,this mountain where we are going,  is 14000 ft tall!

We had to rock scramble over this stream to get to the waterfall! It was challenging but really fun! Hard to get it in a photo.

Really hard to get a good picture because the waterfall is in a narrow crevice and it was still mostly frozen. Plus, lol, I was balancing on 2 round stones and there were too many people. but you get the idea.

We then hiked in the forest!

And we did find a sparse few flowers.




Wax currant

Trumpet Gooseberry





Coming out of the woods the aspen leaves were glowing with that new spring glow!!!


Back at our campsite I noticed this sweet little detail. When they built this little wall to make the campsite boundary. They put 2 seats in the wall! How cool is that. you may have to zoom in to see them.
Our last night  camping so we had hotdogs by the fire.

So in celebatory fashion we had a great firepit   !




 
I hope you enjoyed following along on our journey. Look back at Sequoia and Lassen. I finally figured out how to add videos. I may post on the ride home  but not sure. ox to you all!!
















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