Today we had to get our rithme back, being fully ready by 8:30am. Here we couldn’t prepare our picnic (meaning loading up from the breakfast buffet).
First a 3 1/2 hours drive over I-25. The ranger at the visitor park of the Great Sand Dunes National Park suggested to go up the High Dunes, as we were after all in the Great Sand Dunes! Sand from the desert is picked up, the sand is swelled by wind, but then by humidity dropped just in front of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and so dunes are formed. It is an awesome idea to find dunes between the mountains.
So we started to walk the High Dunes. But boy it is hard to walk in sand. Even Dany started the walk, with his sandals in hand. But the sand was on this day of October 14th still hot to walk on it for a while.
As we were not into sledding from the dunes, we did a 1 mile walk into the woods next to the dunes, the Monteville Nature trail. It was a nice climbing walk with a nice view over the dunes.
This is our 10th National Park on this trip, and we are all so impressed that each park has its own character and so different and each park is so awesome.
On our 1 hour drive to our hotel we stopped in the small town of Alamosa. Unbelievable it had a Starbucks, so Dany was so happy. It was a nice stop on the terrace with the sun and the good company😜
Now we are in Monte Vista, a typical American remote mountain town. Luckily our hotel has an indoor pool and we found a family Mexican restaurant, where the margaritas are bigger than we ever have seen and where the taco salad was a nice surprise.
2019canyontrip 