Great Sand Dunes National Park

Heading out for a fun filled camping trip with Jennifer's family.  We camped near the Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The perfect way to spend Memorial Day Weekend.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park

We entered the park from one of the back Jeep trails to add a little adventure to our trip and to try out our Jeep on some real rocks!!  We led the way followed by Jennifer (Kevin's sister) and family in their Suburban.  What would have taken about 20 minutes in the RZR took us about 90 minutes in our vehicles.  The trail was pretty sweet though.  Really rocky in places and then pure deep sand in others, and then about 18 water crossings!

Driving on sand sure felt strange as it pulled our vehicle in all sorts of directions.  And yes, we actually got the Jeep stuck!  After playing in the sand and water, we started on the shorter section to get to the Visitor's Center.  There is a deep section that we had watched vehicle after vehicle attempt it, get stuck and have to air down their tires before trying again.  Well, Kevin just had to try it himself without airing down.  We switched to sand/mud mode and hit the gas.  Uh, oops.  We got to the deep part and were just spinning our tires!  We worked our way backwards by spinning the tires and twisting the steering wheel and tried again.  Same result.  Finally, we had to admit that we needed to air down!
We told Jen and Ryan what needed to happen and I could just see Ryan itching to try it himself without airing down too!  Oh these men and trying to prove something!
Aired down, we made it through without a problem at all!!!  Nice that the national park has air available to fill back up! (except the wind was strong enough that we probably cold have just opened the valves and the wind would have done it for us!!!)

The water crossings sure were entertaining.  A few were DEEP!!!  We really got to use our hydraulic lift and raise ourselves up by five more inches to avoid drowning the engine!  Below is a picture of Jen & Ryan plowing through.  They pretty much buried their whole bumper, license plate etc!!

 We made it to the Dunes!!!  WOW!  Amazing sight to see the massive rolling sands steeply plummeting into the river below.  There are times of the year when it is windier that other times, but the rangers say that it is usually between 10-15 mph.  Well, we arrived on the windiest day!  You could barely stand up, let alone catch your breath if you were facing just right.

The river at the base of the dunes was spread out about 60 feet wide and never more than 5 or so inches in places.  The water would come down stream like normal and then the wind would rush it back upstream only to allow it to come down again.

Off came the shoes and we all plunged into the river to the dunes.  The wind was so strong that none of the shoes would stay down.  Burying them in wet sand did the trick!!

Jadeyn loved it!!! Buckets, water, sand, sunshine, cousins! He was in heaven!!  They climbed the dunes, slid down, made sand castles and did everything that makes little boys happy.

Three of the cousins all perfectly be-speckled in we sand!

After the trail, it was pretty sickening to look at our Jeep.  There was a lot of branches that reached out to grab us.  Thankfully, all these "scratches" were just where the branches touched us and then the dust collected!

Here are all the boys!!!!!

Ethan, Jadeyn, Kaiden, Tyler, Karsten, Kaleb

Here is our evidence of the winds!  There were High Wind Warnings posted all over the Visitors Center (as if we needed to read about it in order to notice!!).  Today's max speed was 48, but that was at the Visitor's Center, not out on the exposed dunes where we were.

The boys got filled out their reports and lined up to receive their Junior Ranger Badges.  This was Jadeyn's first one and he was so adorable being all serious as he listened closely to everything the Ranger told him.

Hanging out in the hammock.  I wish I had gotten a good picture of all six boys in the hammock this year, but this one is sweet!

The trip didn't end there. Unfortunately, two days after we got home we discovered a juicey tick dining on our little boy's neck, right above the hairline.  Poor kid!!!  We told him that we had to take it off and he started crying saying, "Its just a mole, why do you have to take my mole off!?"  We realized that since he couldn't see it, it felt just like a mole to him.  So we told him it was like a big sliver and we had to get it out or it would hurt worse.  We laid him face down on a blanket and he actually held still the whole time!  We were shocked.
We found out that the appropriate way to remove a tick is to take tweezers, put firm pressure on its body for two whole minutes before beginning to pull gently.  The goal is to get everything out, including the "cement" that the tick injects in to keep himself in place.  Sure enough, when the tick was finally free, he had a tuft of white stuff firmly in his mouth!  Wild.

Jadeyn did great, just has a little scab and no sign of anything else from the tick!  What a trooper.