T-Dub'ing for Dune Views at the GSDNP

 GSDNP: Great Sand Dunes National Park

Yesterday, September 21, was spent cruising up and down the trails and roads of this national park.  It was a late start, I didn't get to the park till after 10AM but that's OK since it was a bit chilly before then.

Some of the sights seen:

Fall Color is starting to show here...

Couple of bucks...

At the Castle Creek picnic area, I saw these two fellows making their way up the steep slope of the nearby dune:

It made feel a bit better, seeing even younger guys like these had to make multiple stops to catch their breath.  Oh, and it looks like they made it to the top but no, it was but a false summit.

I ate some trail mix while watching the climbers, a couple of chipmunks kept wandering near hoping for a handout.  

A bit more riding resulted in this view of more Fall Colors at the base of more dunes:

At the Sand Pit area, I was sitting watching the group of horse riders I'd passed on the trail before make their way into the dunes:

I must say, that's the way to climb into the dunes, on a horse's back!

Lacking a horse, and Yagi not being allowed in the wilderness' dunes, I walked up the same trail as the horse riders.  It proved pretty easy actually.

I then rode to the main dune area where most visitors use to get up on the dunes:

I expect Martha and I will use this area to see how far up the dunes we can manage to climb.

It was close to 5PM at this point, so I elected to position myself outside the park at a nice vantage point to watch the dunes grow shadows.

At 6 PM, I'd had enough of the wind so I headed on back to camp.  All in all, a good day's worth of riding.

A snake I saw on the road to camp, I ushered it off the road before it would get run over....