First Day of Spring at the Great Sand Dunes NP

Another warm day here in the vicinity of the Great Sand Dunes National Park. The temperatures would reach 79° at their height in the late afternoon. 

I rode out on Yagi, my TW200, at around 3:00 p.m. towards the Pinion Campground inside the National Park.  The campground is closed for the season, so I parked near the amphitheater and walked into the trailhead for the Dunes Overlook trail.

This overlook gives you a good higher view of the sand dunes without actually having to climb the dunes themselves and getting sand in your shoes.  It's about a mile to the top of the small hill that forms the overlook. The trail is littered with rocks and stones so you have to watch yourself, the switchbacks are many but not too steep.

I'll admit I had to stop a couple of times or so to catch my breath on the uphill parts.

Still, I made it and here's what one can see from up there: 

Then there was time for some close-up shots using the binoculars adapter for my camera phone.i really liked the wind-created patterns in the sand.

Well most of the shots I was able to frame correctly in order to remove the curvature of the binocular lens eyepiece, some of them I could not get right and so you get to see the curvature of the eyepiece.

Can you see the people down there?

I made it back to Yagi with no issues and posed her near the base of the dunes:

Finally a video of the dunes atop Dunes Overlook Point

I wasn't very tired but I was feeling a bit sore from all the hiking, especially in my left knee. I'm sure it'll be fine tomorrow.  I returned to camp and processed these  pictures while sitting in the warm sunshine of the afternoon. 

This being the weekend, the place is filling up with other camper rigs and tent campers.

More Views of the Dunes and the Mountains

 I woke before dawn and so was in place to capture early morning lighting of the Sangre de Cristo mountains visible from my campsite.

For reference:

Challenger Point 2x Zoom with binos

Challenger Point

Crestone Peak

The dunes at ten miles....using binos

of course

3x zoom of above

Video taken using phone and bino adapters:

Around 5PM I wrote out to the National Park with Yagi My TW200. It's about 20 mi or so to the visitor center. I mainly stayed in the area just before the fee gate for the following shots of the dunes as the shadows settled into them with the sun going down. 

A short video to show how wide an area the dunes cover on this side:

A previous visit in 2016 by Martha and I: LINK

Views of some the Sangre de Cristo Mountains

Wednesday, March 18

Altitude: 7543ft

I spent the afternoon enjoying the sunshine and trying my hand again on using binos with my phone's camera.

The temperature only got to 75°F and while it felt quite warm in sunshine, it was a bit cool in the shade, especially the light breeze.

I thought the light was OK at 430pm, some short depth of field shots:

But then, as the golden hour took effect, the colors got a bit richer.  They really came out with some post-processing.  Here are bino closeups of the peaks show above.  Taken from my campsite using a tripod and the bino adapters.

Roughly 21 miles away

Blanca Peak

Closeup of a visitor, sitting on my campsite 

shelter's roof.

Returning to Colorado

Tuesday, March 17

I spent St Patrick's Day driving along I-25 to Albuquerque from Elephant Butte New Mexico. 

I spent Monday night lot docking at Suzuki Samurai Guru Mike W's home in Elephant Butte.  Dinner was with neighborhood friends Ed and Luana where I learn to play the game called Aggravation, quite a lot of fun actually.

I woke late on Tuesday, it was almost 8:00 a.m.! Coffee inside with Mike and Laura while we chatted for a while and then I left them at 9:30 to head north along I-25 towards Albuquerque. 

This time though, I decided not to use the same old route of staying on I-25 all the way back to Denver metro. I thought I would explore the US 285 route between Albuquerque / Taos in Northern New Mexico. 

The first BLM campground I tried was still closed for the season, damn it. They don't open till April. This was the Santa Cruz Lake Recreation Area Overlook campground.

So I continued on to the Rio Grande Gorge recreation area which had four open campgrounds but no dispersed spots that I could see although there was a small primitive camping lot that was very small. 

I checked them all out, I ended up at the first one closest to the highway, since it had open spots and the RV sites had electricity. No water at the site though since I guess it's still winter in there schedule even though the weather has been very warm. 

It was close to 5:00 before I was fully set up, long day, lots of windy roads through hilly terrain. 

After dinner I took Yagi out for a ride hoping for some kind of nice lighting. But the lighting went away pretty quickly after these pictures due to the high canyon walls of the gorge.

Wednesday, March 18

I left the Pilar campground shortly before 9:00 a.m., having waited fruitlessly for sunlight to come out enforce so I could get some pictures of the Rio Grande waters.

It was hilly driving north and I crossed into Colorado at 10:00 a.m. 

About an hour after that I was nearing the Great Sand Dunes National Park area and the sign Luis Lake Wildlife Area.  I am now staying at the campground there where there is free electricity at some of the sites and great Mountain views of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.