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Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

The Preserve is a national park that conserves an area of large sand dunes up to 750 feet tall on the eastern edge of the San Luis Valley located in the Sangre de Cristo Range, in Colorado.

 

Originally designated as a National Monument in 1932, the designation changed to a National Park in 2004. 

The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America.  The dunes cover an area of about 30 sq mi and are estimated to contain over 5 billion cubic meters of sand.

We began our exploration of the park in the Visitor Center where we watched a 20 minute film about the park, browsed through the gift shop and viewed the interactive exhibits.

Before driving over to the dune parking lot we ate our lunch at one of the picnic shelters.

Hiking is permitted throughout the dunes with the warning that the sand surface temperature may reach 150 degrees in summer.

 

 

 

 

While we huffed and puffed our way to the top of a very small dune we watched people sandboarding.   

 

 

We dumped out the sand that had accumulated in our shoes prior to getting in our truck.  OR so we thought we had dumped all the sand out.

  A week later I was still shaking sand out of my shoes.