Colorado Vacation - Day 2

After spending the night in Salida, we headed south towards Alamosa and the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  This location was made a national monument in 1932 by president Herbert Hoover; it protected the main dune field only.  In 2004, it was expanded into a national park and preserve four times the size of the monument.  (Sometime in the future, a post will be written about national parks versus monuments versus recreation areas...)

Driving in, you could see the dune field from a distance; these are the tallest dunes in North America.  This became more apparent to us as we got closer and closer.  We have been to White Sands, and also the dunes at Death Valley - these are much much taller.

After visiting the visitor center and watching the video to understand more about the ecosystem, we headed to the dunefield and start on our way up.  The hiking is hard work for at times, you sink several inches into the sand.

The goal became to find ridge lines that only went upward towards the higher elevations.  Very beautiful...

We ended up following the path of some foreigners that were a bit ahead of us.  Once we caught up to them, they probably thought we were quiet strange.  Where's Rob?  There isn't much vegetation on the dunes, but there were tumbleweeds.  Medano Creek was not flowing at this time in the year.

After Great Sand Dunes, we headed north-west to Gunnison.  We started with a late hike in the Curecanti National Recreation Area...Curecanti Creek trail.  We had this four-mile/900ft trail all to ourselves!