Day 18

We woke up very early this morning, and I drove Patty and Rachel to the Albuquerque Airport for their flight home. We let Josh stay asleep in the trailer. After dropping them off, I returned to the campground and spent some time cleaning the trailer up and re-organizing some of our gear.

Josh and I had a fairly short drive today from Albuquerque, NM to Alamosa, CO, which is very close to Great Sand Dunes National Park. The drive was only 220 miles and was expected to take about 4 hours.

As we were crossing the border from New Mexico into Colorado, there were some very ominous thunderstorms in the area. Fortunately, we only passed through one storm, very briefly. The rest seemed to find their way around us.

As we were getting close to Alamosa, it occurred to me that we would probably be able to go and visit Great Sand Dunes National Park today, rather than tomorrow morning. This would save us from having to wake up early tomorrow, pack up the trailer, go to the park, hike to the top of the dunes and then drive all the way to Amarillo, TX.

We decided that we would see what our campground for the night was like. If it was a "fun" campground, with lots of stuff to do, we'd stick with the original plan. If it was a "lame" campground, then we'd go to the park.

We arrived at the campground, dropped off our trailer and looked around ... it turned out to be "lame", so off to the park we went.

When we arrived at the park, the weather was pretty good. It was actually a bit on the cool side, which was definitely going to be a plus for hiking to the top of the dunes. There were some dark clouds over the mountains nearby, but it appeared that they wouldn't be a problem for a while. The Parks Service estimates that it will take approximately 2 hours to hike to the top of High Dune and back, so off we went.

We got about halfway up, and all of a sudden, the weather started to make its presence known. We were debating what to do ... should we turn back and come back in the morning, or should we keep going? We hemmed and hawed for a few minutes and ultimately decided to continue on.

At that point, the wind started to pick up and we were being sand-blasted. It was really quite uncomfortable! We continued on anyway. It's amazing how difficult it is to walk uphill in the sand!!! We got about 100 yards from the top and we heard the first sound of thunder. At that point, we immediately turned around and started making a dash back towards the parking lot.

Unfortunately, we didn't make it before the rain started. We were getting soaked, it was cold, the wind was blowing sand in our faces and then it started to hail. This was fun!!!!

We finally made it back to the parking lot. We were soaked from head to toe with no dry clothes to change into. Our boots were completely full of wet sand, that felt like concrete. We jumped into the car anyway, getting the seats and everything else all wet. Of course, as soon as we got into the car, I realized that we had our rain ponchos sitting in the console!!!

We drove back to the campground, and fortunately, it wasn't raining there. We got the trailer set up as quickly as we could, and then we both showered to get all of the sand off of us. Our boots are pretty messed up ... I'm hoping that once they dry out, all of the sand will just pour out ... we'll see.

Next, I did some laundry (including the clothes we were wearing today) and then we made dinner.

Unfortunately, in spite of my best efforts to keep the camera dry while we were on the dunes, it would appear that I was not successful. As of now, it's not working. I'm hoping that it will "dry out" overnight and will work in the morning ... I'm not too optimistic about that.

If nothing else, I guess it makes for a good story.

Tomorrow, we're off to Amarillo, TX. Hopefully it will be a bit less adventurous!