When going to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, you might wonder, what the heck do you do? Sure, it’s cool to read about the history of how the dunes were formed or to look around in the museum, but the best thing to do is, go sand sledding. Really, there are two things you can do: sand sledding and sand boarding. For me, sandboarding was much easier, but it may be different for other people.
The first thing you should do is stop at the little shop, grab a board rental, and use the restroom. You don’t want to have to use the restroom while at the top of a giant mountain of sand. Next, take the five-minute drive to the parking lot where you leave your car and hike to adventure. In our case, they were re-surfacing the road, so it was more of a 20 min wait/slow drive before the adventure walk. When we got to the parking lot, we unloaded our boards and grabbed some snacks. Only when we were ten minutes into the trek across the sand did we realize that we had forgotten all of our water.
Now, walking up a giant dune when it is 90 degrees outside in the blazing sun, you might want to bring water. We decided that, eh, it was not a big deal and that we would only be spending 30 min on the dunes. Welp, we defiantly should have gone and gotten water, because it turns out, sand sledding/boarding is a lot of fun. We only got 20 min of actual playing, and like 45 min of walking. I was bummed, but I knew that there would be other opportunities to come back.
After we came back we went to the visitors center/museum and checked out the stuff there. I did the junior ranger program, so I got the badge. I told my parents that I defiantly wanted to come back here with my siblings in our RV because there were lots of RV people there. I am super glad that I got to visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park. (Dramatic music plays). Next stop, the International House of Prayer.