GREAT SAND DUNES
Our last stop of our Colorado Adventure was Great Sand Dunes National Park. Nestled about three and a half hours south of Denver in south central Colorado, Great Sand Dunes gave us an experience unlike any other. One thing we knew we wanted to do within the park was sand sled so that involved finding a place to rent a sled before arriving at the park. The NPS doesn’t rent sleds so you have to find a sports store in the area that does, we used Kristi Mountain Sports.
Once we got to the park we had an opportunity to explore the visitor center and then hit the dunes. The dunefield is vast and imposing and makes you feel very very small. If you have ever taken long walks on the beach, as a part of a date or just in your spare time, you know how exhausting sand hiking can be on just a flat surface, add incline and it’s a whole new ballgame.
We had a lot of fun hiking up to High Dune and sledding our way down here and there, but by the time we got back down to the bottom with our sleds, the idea of hiking up to Star Dune (which can take up to five hours roundtrip) wasn’t so appealing, so we decided we would sled a little more at the lower dunes before packing it in. While there are forested hikes and alpine hikes within the boundaries of the park, we really wanted to experience the strangeness of these magical dunes as our main adventure on this day.
Great Sand Dunes National Park is on the traditional and stolen land of the Jicarilla Apache, Ute, and Cheyenne people.
Listen while you look! This buttons will link you to the podcast episode for this park and gallery.
