Cookn Travels: Sand Castles but No Oceans

Great Sand Dunes National Park (58th National Park, 2004) and Zapata Falls

The contrast of desert, sand dunes, and snow cap mountains, makes Great Sand Dunes National Park a treasure in Colorado. This National Park hosts the tallest sand dunes in North America, desert, grasslands, alpine lakes, tundra, and aspen forests. The National Park System describes it as "Dunes among Diversity."

What caused this phenomenon? Millions of years of erosion along with freezing and thawing turned the soil into sand.

This area has a long history of settlements dating back as far as 11,000 years. It was the Gold Rush of the mid-late 1850's that brought people to settle Almosa and Monte Vista near the dunes. It was thought that the sand dunes were filled with Gold but only trace amounts were ever found in the sand. The amount of labor and short season, made the gold rush here a short lived and abandoned. In the early 1900's, the people of Almosa and Monte Vista wanted to protect the sand dunes from continued exploration and distruction by people who had dreams of finding gold.

The Great Sand Dunes was designated as a National Monumnet in 1932, by President Hoover. In the 1990's, groups of supporters wanted to give the area even more protection and started petitioning for National Park Status. In 2004, the park was expanded to 149,024 acres and designated the country's 58th National Park.

Medano Creek water play

Medano Creek is a favorite area to play when the winter snow pack in the Rocky Mountains melts and temporarily creates a flowing stream through the park. Due to high snow pack and late spring snow, the peak flow of the creek was still steady and postponed the mosquito season. (Yeah!) We did however, have to deal with cool temperatures, 38 degrees at night and a high of 60 that day. I have to say that we were cold as we crossed the creek to get to the dunes!

View of creek from the top of the dunes.

Sand Sledding

Visitors are permitted to sled or sand board on any of the 30 square miles dune field. We rented 2 sand sleds so the boys could get the ultimate sand dune experience. I'll let the pictures and video speak for themselves. Can you spot the smiles on their faces??

Going up the Dune

At the top getting ready.

View from the top of the Dune.

Here goes Brodey!

Here's Dunovan!

Here is Doug!!

So, where am I.... This is what I did. I am getting to old for this kind of stuff.

Walking back to the parking lot after a morning of sand sledding.

Eastern Dune Ridge 4WD area

We drove our 4WD Silverado on the sand road to the base of the mountain at the Sand Ramp. It was a beautiful ride that most visitors don't get to experience. I was also able to get some more senior pictures of Dunovan. Brodey decided to jump into the photo shoot and the boys had a "photo shoot" all their own!

I think this one is my favorite "Senior Picture" so far.

15 years old! Not a little boy any more!

I can see this one blown up in my house!

My boys are men!

Zapata Falls

Outside of the National Park are Zapata Falls. This was an adventure to get to. Right off the main road is a sign that says to drive 2.8 miles up a rough road, then hike .5 miles to the falls. "Rough" was an understatement, although we saw people in cars and mini vans driving on this road, they were crazy! We made it though and the views from the top of the hill were amazing!

The hike back to the falls wasn't a long one but we did get a surprise when we got there. The falls were tucked back in at the head of a stream. To get to it, again I bailed out on this one, the guys got wet and cold to see the falls. The pictures are what I took from my nice safe location, the falls pictures where taken by Doug.