The Pitts Stop

Great Sand Dunes National Park

July 11, Tuesday: Colorado Springs, CO to Great Sand Dunes Park, CO

We woke up to a sunny morning for a change, so we made a quick trip to the Garden of the Gods to get some clear pictures of the famous setting of two red rocks with Pikes Peak in the background.

We returned to the RV, packed up, and began our 170 mile drive down I25 and over route 160 to the Great Sand Dunes. Although the Great Sand Dunes has an RV camping area, it has no hookups, so we reserved c site in a campground that is right outside the park. After Jack stopped to unhook the car while I registered at the campground, the RV wouldn’t start. We called the tow service and the good news was that there was someone who could tow us and there was a mechanic in Alamosa who agreed to look at it, but the bad news was he had no parts for our engine/chassis and couldn’t assure us he could really fix it. Jack fiddled around and got it started, so we decided to go ahead and park it in the RV park so we’d have hookups and could stay there a while if we had to while deciding what to do next.

We hurried over to the park right after we got settled – what a magnificent site with the big mountains right behind these amazing sand dunes. We hiked among the dunes for a while and I decided to try to get to the top of one of the dunes. When I got there, I could only see more dunes (I know, don’t say it), so decided to go ahead and hike to the top of the tallest dune – 700’. Just before I got to the top, there was a huge thunder clap and the massive turbulent clouds did not look friendly, so I had to abandon my goal – and I was so close! We had to practically run down the sand dunes with the threat of lightening and I’m glad it was a lot easier going down than climbing up!

When we returned to our campground that overlooks the park, we took some great sunset photos of the dunes.

The cell phone service is practically non-existent in the campground and surrounding area and the public phone at the camp office is broken, making it more difficult to arrange to have the RV repaired. We played games after dinner as there was no TV reception and went to bed.