Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO

Two nights camping at Great Sand Dunes National Park was spectacular! The weather was great, warm during the days and a bit chilly at night, and immediately upon arrival we were amazed with the scenery!

We first hiked the Dunes Overlook Trail and got some beautiful evening views of the dunes, surrounding Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and this beautiful Rocky Mountain juniper tree

Great Sand Dunes NP is known for its dark skies and we thoroughly enjoyed the amazing display of stars, the Milky Way and saw many shooting stars. This also gave us a chance to try taking some night sky photos with our camera.

We spent the next morning hiking in the Sand Dunes. We had heard the wind picks up in the afternoon so the morning is the best time to visit the dunes (and we definitely agree, the sand in the wind was not fun). The Sand Dunes are across the Medano Creek so first we had to walk barefoot through the creek (very shallow but COLD!)  then made our way up to High Dune – which means you look up to find the peak and just start walking up the dunes (there are no pathways in the sand, it’s just a free-for all).  It was a lot of fun but also exhausting.

After making it up to High Dune we ran down the side into a valley and then just wandered around like 2 kids in a giant sand pit for a couple of hours until we finally made our way out and back across the creek. Needless to say our shoes were packed with sand and our feet were pretty tired, as was the rest of us – the National Park is over 7,500ft in elevation so we were definitely feeling some effects from the altitude.

We also walked a bit into the mountains (Montville Nature Trail and some of Mosca Pass Trail) to see the fall color in the narrow-leaf cottonwoods and aspen.

We really enjoyed our time at Great Sand Dunes!

Highlights of Great Sand Dunes National Park

• Exploring the dunes – wherever we wanted to go!
• The amazing views of the night sky

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