Magnificent Dunes and Shimmering Aspens
Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park
Colorado is home to several stunning national parks. The most popular is undoubtedly Rocky Mountain, a park that I was fortunate to live near growing up. But one of their less-visited parks is in my opinion equally magnificent, and home to the tallest sand dunes in North America. Coincidentally, the last national park I visited on the shore of Lake Michigan also had sand dunes, but I knew that these would be much different — and not only because of their size.
For those of you keeping track, this is my 4th park on my way to hopefully visiting all 63. Previously, I have visited and written stories about Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Indiana Dunes.
After stopping by the visitor’s center to get my bearings and watch the park film (I always start with this if I can), I headed out onto the dunes. Looking up at them, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit intimidated by what I was setting out to do. You can’t really get a sense from the pictures of just how enormous they are. The only clue that I can give is that the teensy tiny dots that you can see in the photo below are people.
