Come Along On Our Camper Adventures!

Today we had planned on taking off early and hitting Great Sand Dunes National Park for most of the afternoon. Well our 3.5 hour drive turned into an over 6 hour drive b/c Route 50, the main road we needed to take, was closed all morning and is closed every Monday morning for long term construction projects. Something about expanding the road and literally blowing up mountains 🤦🏻‍♀️ Unfortunately, where we were at, there was really no way around the construction that was not a major detour. So we detoured. It was a beautiful drive that took us up to the north side of Gunnison and through tons of mountains, but not a drive we were expecting today.

By the time we got to our campsite at Sand Dunes, it was raining so the company that rents sleds and snowboards to use on the dunes had halted rentals for the day. The kids were bummed, but we did what we have learned to do on this trip… readjust and move on. Luckily it was a quick storm and we still headed over. The storm and late day timing actually made the conditions perfect. The sand can get up to 165 degrees in the summer sun, but it was cool, cloudy and breezy for us. We walked some of the dunes. It was actually the weirdest park I think I’ve been to. In the middle of nowhere, next to a giant mountain range are these enormous piles of sand and they have been there for 400,000 years. Joe though it was going to be bigger… but after walking back with the littlest one, after she did an extended walk with dad, and hearing about the “10 pounds of sand” in her shoes and the blister that was “the biggest blister anyone every had” … trust me, the sand dunes were big enough! It was a fun short visit and another park checked off our list. Tomorrow we have a long travel day, headed to western Kansas.