Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Hiking the Dunes, a Mystery Campground and We're Home

Martha and I drove the CR-V over to the Great Sand Dunes NP so she could walk the dunes and of course get her National Park Passport Stamp.

Having the car, made it easy to also carry the three now empty spare water cans to refill them at the NP's campground.  We also refilled the spare 5 gallon gas can at the station near the entrance to the park.

We didn't walk far into the dunes mind you, just enough to get a taste.  The crowds were "bearable" for a Monday too.

Regular Martha

Silly Martha




Note: though there wasn't many people in the shots above, I edited them out anyways.  We did not have the dunes to ourselves.

We returned to the campsite and while Martha prepared lunch, I took Yagi on a quick ride over to a set of picnic tables with sun shades we'd seen from the highway yesterday.


The tables are listed as $200 at Tractor Supply.
There was one table still in the box, onsite.

Not fancy material, the sun shades...

There's about seven such picnic table sites with a BBQ grill onsite, some of them have a square made of wooden posts which look like possible tent sites.

No signage, just the sites, a porta-potty and a garbage dumpster.  Seems like it's half built or something.  It reminded me of the half-completed houses and shacks in Baja California.

As part of the weirdness, someone left some clothing at one of the sites:

We left the GSDNP yesterday, thinking to do at least an overnight camping in the Tarryall area for Fall Colors.

Sadly, it's not yet time, perhaps next week before the areas we traversed along US285 turn color.  There was some promise around Kenosha Pass but by that point we'd passed the camping areas and just focused on getting home.

No issues towing the CR-V behind Uma except for some loose wires in the tow lights, which will be resolved soon.

4 comments:

Lori said...

A shame those sun shades seem a tad small for those picnic tables. Are the dunes better than White Sands?

redlegsrides said...

Lori, yeah a tad small.... White Sands mo better. These are the highest at 250ft but it won't be me climbing them.

CCjon said...

The dunes that most impressed me were the ones you Dom recommended in California, Imperial Dunes(?).

The color of the sand at NP Great Dunes left a lot to be desired. The White Sands NP is great, but not much activity there in February. Need to try that place either at sunrise or sunset, but the Park hours are not conducive at those times.They make you leave before sunset.

But the Imperial dunes, lots of activity to photograph, no closing hours that I saw. More photo opportunities.

Another all time favorite is Sand Mountain in Nevada on US-50. Nice white sand...






redlegsrides said...

I agree CCjon, the Imperial Dunes were the best I've seen so far. And, you can ride them! I'd not known re Sand Mountain...must check it out if I can.