Great Sand Dunes

On the final day of our 12th Anniversary Colorado Road Trip, we started the day by going to the Great Sand Dunes National Park.

We had stayed as close to the Sand Dunes as we could, but they are sort of in the middle of nowhere, so we had a short drive that morning to get there.

If you look at the horizon, there you can see the sand dunes between the mountain base and the foreground.

Our first stop was the visitor center.  There was a gift shop and some exhibits describing the formation of the dunes.

This is a panoramic photo taken of the dunes from the visitor center.  Click on it to see it in all it's panoramic-ness.

Official Family Photo taken at the Great Sand Dunes

The main thing that we did at the dunes was sand sledding.  We rented some sand sleds, and then we took off our socks and shoes and rolled up our pants to walk across the river so that we could go to the dunes.  The river was icy cold.  The temperature outside of the dunes was about 60 degrees.  But, the sand heats up quickly and traps heat, so it was closer to 150 degrees on the sand.  This meant that I ended up carrying the dog across the sand, because he would have burned his little bitty paws .

We took the Go Pro with us while we were on the dunes.  Here are the videos: