Road Trip - Part 4: The Great Sand Dunes

Leaving the Grand Canyon, we drove through the entirety of the Navajo Nation and the Four Corners area of our country on our way to Cortez, Colorado. There isn't much to say about that lengthy drive other than move along, folks, nothing to see here. There was very little in the way of scenery, and what there was to see was largely depressing - too much dust, too little civilization, and a pervasive feeling of destitution - all right in the middle of these United States. While Drew drove, I had recurring Trail of Tears daydreams and flashbacks of reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States with Ms. Worsham in 11th grade U.S. History. Zinn says there are always two sides to every story; I say both sides of this story are ugly. Eventually, the sun set on us and the Navajo Nation and our uncomfortable encounter with the reality of others - a luxury, I realize, that isn't universal - and we arrived just before midnight at our clean hotel in Cortez, complete with electricity and hot water and an indoor swimming pool.

After a good night's rest and the first continental breakfast of our trip, we hopped back in the car and headed east towards the Great Sand Dunes. Drew visited the dunes with his dad almost exactly 9 years earlier, in 2004. I've been harboring envy of that trip for probably that long - partly for the dunes themselves, but perhaps also partly because on May 27, 2004 I was Drew Barnes' girlfriend, missing my weekend buddy while he was in Colorado with his papa. Plus, look at that stud of a seventeen-year-old and those golden locks. How could I not pine for him?

So, with full control of our road trip itinerary, I knew early in the planning stages of our journey that since the Great Sand Dunes lie somewhere between Provo, UT and Raleigh, NC, we would be visiting them on our exodus from the west. We arrived sometime around noon, under a grey sky with lots of threatening clouds. We decided to brave it and see as much as we could see before the storms hit. In the end, we couldn't have asked for better weather; we did most of the hardest hiking under comfortable cloud cover, and the storm moved along by the time we reached the top, opening up one amazing view after another.

:: Just getting started ::

:: All there is of Medano Creek at this time of year ::

:: Dune sands comprised of weathered rocks, not mollusk shells :: 

:: One of the beetles endemic to the dunes; that's about all that lives there ::

:: Going up and up and up ::

:: After Drew informed me that the summit we had almost reached was, in fact, a false summit ::

:: At the top of the wretched false summit ::

:: Heading towards the real deal ::

:: Finally at the top of High Dune ::

Let me just say, hiking in the sand is no small thing. The two-steps-forward, one-big-slide-backwards rate of ascent is slightly frustrating and incredibly tiring. Not to mention, there aren't any trees to stop under or landmarks to make you feel like you're making at least some progress. Being out in the midst of the dunes feels a lot like (I imagine, I don't really know, of course) being stranded somewhere in the middle of the Sahara Desert - nothing in view but sand and more sand. It's strange how hard it is to maintain perspective and how easy it is to get lost if you focus only on the grains of sand that are right in front of you and forget to look up every once in a while.  

Once we finally reached the top of High Dune, we had a snack and drank lots of water, and I let my hair down to ease some of the altitude-induced pressure on my noggin. Then we just sat for a while, reveling in the fact that we were, for all intents and purposes, and in more ways than one, sitting on top of the world, even if only for a short while. 

 :: The (much easier) descent ::

:: A much-needed shoe dump ::

 :: The new end of Medano Creek ::

:: Watching the storm roll back in at the end of our day on the dunes ::

Drew was talking last week about how miraculous it really is that two of us were able to visit the Great Sand Dunes together. Of all of the places in the world to be, and of all of the people to be there with, a few weeks ago I was trekking through a big pile of sand in the middle of Colorado with none other than Drew Barnes. Somehow, the sands of time have shifted in ways that brought us together (not once, but twice), took us far west, and brought us home again via some of the coolest places on Earth (or at least in this country). Miraculous indeed.