Sunday, June 6, 2010 - Ride Day at the Great Sand Dune National Park

Last night we sat and watched thunderstorms all around us, but none every made it to us. Although they were predicting thunderstorms again at about 3:00 this afternoon, it started out as a lovely day, and we were anxious to get a ride in, so we got up early, had the horses loaded in by 9:00 (fortunately it was still pretty cool), and headed out to a fascinating anomaly they call the Great Sand Dune National Park. Ninety minutes later (and ten degrees cooler, fortunately), we were approaching this incredible oddity. Having climber over the mountain range at LaVeta Pass, then driven on several flat straight roads reminiscent of the Great Plains, we came to end of a valley where countless tons of sand had piled up. I mean COUNTLESS! I thought it would be like a great sand pit, but oh, no, it truly was HUGE DUNES! You could imagine what the Sahara looks like, only built up into a mini-mountain range. It's 30 square miles, and to ride around it would something like 50 miles. It was incredible to see. There's also a stream that runs along the edge, so one great attraction is to wade in the shallow creek in what is essentially a giant wading pool next to giant dunes. The dunes were so big, we actually saw some young people sand-boarding down them. We didn't even know there was such a thing, but just like snow-boarding, they plummeted down the hill trying to make things happens on their boards. No where near as fast, of course, but entertaining nonetheless. We watched a lot of people truly struggle to get up those dunes, it looked way too much like hard work to us!
Anyway, we had a choice to follow a sandy road, which had a lot of 4X4 traffic on it, go along another semi-marked trail, or simply go cross-country, a nice feature here, you can go almost anywhere you like, "except where there are a lot of people", as the man at the park gate explained. They must have been having a free weekend, because they didn't charge us the usual entrance fee, so we got lucky on that one. It did increase the traffic, however.
We followed a trail out of the trailer parking area, along with two other women who were just heading out. One had forgotten her cinch so she was riding bareback with only stirrups (not sure what that rig looked like, but that's how it looked.) We turned off at the first trail to the left, leaving them heading out the road. Our trail led us to the stream which we then followed for a few miles. We were on pure sand at some points, dirt, some stony areas, and the quicksand like footing of the river, which was good as long as you didn't stop for long. The long you stopped, the more you'd sink in. At one point, my gelding started splashing his foot, getting his belly wet. We moved out of the river, and after a minute, my horse decided it was time for a roll, so before I knew what was happening, we were on the ground together. I quickly checked to make sure my foot was out of the stirrup, then stepped off. I had just said to Hubby that the day was for the horses to enjoy themselves as well, and, well, rolling just seemed the perfect response to that! He got back up, shook himself off, I stepped back on and off we went! Stopped for lunch under a large shady pine tree a bit later. It was a brilliantly sunny day when we arrived, the stark contrast between the dark blue sky and the light beige sand was truly awesome. During the day, though, some puffy clouds had started to appear. After lunch, we crossed over the road and started to head to higher ground, when we came over a peak and saw an incredible storm heading our way. The sky was black and you could see rain already falling in the distance, so we decided it was time to head back. Traffic on the road had diminished (it had peaked about 1:00, which I suspect was the usual checkout time), so we had a couple of nice trots and canters (in between a few bucking spells, which my gelding decided he was in the mood for), and arrived back at the trailer in no time. As we were preparing for departure, another group arrived (the only other livestock trailer in the parking lot besides us and the two women we saw earlier), and we had a brief chat with them, taking a picture for them, exchanging email address, etc. They were interested in what horse campgrounds I knew about, so I told them about my Google Earth list and this blog, so hopefully we'll stay in touch.
We were out by just after 3:00, stopped at a store for a few supplies on the way home, ran into a little bit of the rain but managed to get back, put the horses away and get the truck under cover (we still have a pickup full of hay) moments before the real storm arrived. A beautiful day that we thoroughly enjoyed!