Our initial plan to hike up to Como Lake were foiled by heavy looking dark grey, almost black clouds that hovered around Blanca Peak. So, we decided to hike around Great Sand Dunes National Park for a couple hours.
I am quite possibly the most paranoid person when it comes to the pandemic. Basically, I steer clear of everyone. WAY clear. We have a National Park Pass but I didn’t even want to have to hand it over to a ranger at the entrance so we went early before anyone was even in the booth. We didn’t park in the Sand Dune lot, but drove past it to a gravel pullout and hiked in the long way so that I wouldn’t have to pass anyone. Seriously.
I’m not sure how far we hiked, we spent a long time out there wandering around. The sand was mostly hardpacked because of overnight rains, so it was fairly easy even climbing straight up the face of towering dunes. There are 30 miles of dunes so we were able to stay WELL away from everyone. We’ve been to the sand dunes in White Sands National Park, and the dunes in Death Valley National Park, but these were by far more impressive.
The famous sand dunes resemble an alien landscape so much that NASA uses the geological conditions to test rovers. The two Viking spacecraft that first landed on Mars proved their astronomical fortitude in the extreme environment of dunes at the national park!
It was Plan B, but we were happy we took the time to explore the dunes.
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