Our National Park road trip was three National Parks/Monument in one. Since we had decided that summer was not the best time to visit the Mesa Verde area, we planned the trip for fall. It was a perfect time of year to go, but with the girls all being freshly back in school we had to shorten the length of our road trip. They missed two days of school and we made it a long weekend. In retrospect, we wish we would have just went ahead and taken a few more days even if it meant more school missed. That probably would have been fine with everyone but Bailee, who is already a bundle of stress:) Our first stop was Great Sand Dunes National Park.
We rented a couple of sand boards and headed for the sand dunes. We originally didn't plan to do the sledding thing, but I'm not sure you can really appreciate the park if you don't.
It is trickier than you might think to stay upright on the sleds. You can get going super fast and you really have to keep the sled from tipping to one side or you're in trouble. We learned the truth of this after Bailee's first run. She made it about half way down a steep dune before she leaned slightly and began to roll like a tumbleweed the rest of the way down. After we made sure she was okay, we could not stop laughing. The girl had sand EVERYWHERE. She had so much sand on her face all you could see was her bright white smile and her scalp was inches thick with sand. It was hysterical (only because she wasn't injured ... which she could have been). Mark had a pretty good wipe-out too, but didn't really hold a candle to this girls.
She is such a good sport and didn't give up trying again and again (with no more crashes). When you rent the boards, you get some special wax that must be applied after every run.
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| Mark was the wax man |
We all took several runs down various dunes. We figured out that if you use your hands behind you rather than holding the handles, it helps with staying in control. However, the friction from the sand and speed often resulted in hands feeling burned.
After sledding for a while Mark wanted to hike to the top of one if the highest dunes. It is so deceptive from the bottom and with each summit you find that you have to climb some more.
I can't even imagine this is the height of summer. It was pretty miserable. If you have ever walked in sand, imagine spending over an hour climbing 700+ feet up with that same momentum. It felt like with each step you weren't really making any progress or moving forward at all. Kars was bookin' it up the dune. She was hundreds of feet ahead of us the whole time.
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| Those little dots are people |
When we made it to the top there was a lot of jumping for joy ... literally! Great backdrop for some cool jumping poses ... and the stall of course.
We played around for a while and then headed back down .. .. sledding whenever possible. It is hard to appreciate the vast amount of sand that is surrounding you. It's pretty amazing. I was so glad we weren't going home with all that sand. The hotel shower was not pretty after Bailee got out :(
We created a great memory at Great Sand Dunes. So glad we included it on our road trip!
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