Great Sand Dunes is difficult to get a handle on. Put simply, it is a giant field of sand dunes in the middle of a valley. When you look at it from a distance, it doesn’t look that big. But you’re wrong. This thing is huge. The highest dune is 750 feet tall which, for those counting at home, is equivalent to a 75 story buidling. Like I said, huge. Plus it is just weird. The surroundings looks like the same arid landscape we’ve been driving through for a couple of days. But here, there is just a random giant field of sand dunes. Strange.

We arrived relatively late on a Monday, it was really windy, really cold, and about to rain. We snapped a few pictures and chickened out on camping. We fled to a cheap motel instead.

We came back the next day, the weather was beautiful. Beautiful enough for us to contemplate climbing the dunes. First you have to cross about 200 yards of flat, soft sand, which is a lot of work. Then you reach the “foothills”, the small dunes. We picked our own trail and started our climb, I would guess that we made it about 300 feet up before we got to a point where the sand was too soft for us weaklings to climb further. Amazing.