Sand Dunes

Well, Alamosa was nothing to write home about in the dark and in the light it was not much better. We were glad to get back on the road. Our first stop was Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was so cool to see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with huge sand dunes in front of them.

It was cold when we arrived at the park just before 9, and it was really windy. Despite the conditions, Dan wanted to hike the sand dunes and summit the tallest one we could see. At the car we put on some layers (we still had jeans on though---Nick Weighton would NOT have been happy!), and headed out for the sand.

Two families were turning back as we headed out. Boy, did they look cold. We managed to brave the 30mph winds and excessive blowing sands and made it to the summit in 40 minutes. It was really fun running and glissading down the big, steep dunes on the way back. Some of the slopes were around 30 degrees which seemed really steep (yes, we measured them with our new slopemeter).

We drove over the mountains to Walsenburg and then on north to Colorado Springs. We stopped for an hour to say hello to Melanie, Ryan, Josh, and Vincent and to see all the boys' Christmas gifts. It was a lot of fun to play for a while.

We got back to Boulder around 4:00 today. The weatherman is predicting 5-10 inches of snow and single-digit temps, so I'm glad we're back in our nice warm house. A fun road trip, albeit short.