After our quick stay in Santa Fe, NM, we headed north into Colorado to spend a few days checking out Great Sand Dunes National Park in Alamosa. We spent 4 nights at Base Camp Family Campground in Alamosa which was about 20-25 minutes to the Sand Dunes park entrance.
Great Sand Dunes National Park
I have to admit, I never knew there were sand dunes in Colorado but when I was looking at a map and saw there was a national park on our way to Moab, we decided to check it out. Great Sand Dunes National Park contains the tallest sand dunes inย North America located on the eastern edge of theย San Luis Valley, and an adjacentย Sangre de Cristo national preserve. The dunes were formed over roughly 440,000 years, created by a unique combination of wind, water, and sediment. Large amounts of sediment were brought into the valley from creeks and streams and the wind blew the sand toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, where opposing storm winds helped squeeze the sand into the tall dunes.ย
We visited on a gorgeous, clear day and were amazed at how breathtaking the dunes were against the backdrop of snow-capped mountains. One of the many things to do at the park include renting sand boards or sleds to ride down the dunes. We opted not to do this since we had Sophie with us, but we did do a short hike on the Dunes Overlook Trail to get different viewpoints of the dunes.
Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge
After exploring the sand dunes, we stopped by the Alamosa National Wildlife Refuge (which is part of the San Luis Valley National Wildlife Refuge) to check it out and hopefully spot some wildlife. We drove part of the wildlife loop and stopped to hike a portion of the Rio Grande Walking Trail. The trail was nicely maintained and we took Sophie in her stroller. The views were stunning with mountains surrounding us, but unfortunately, we didn’t see much wildlife other than a couple of ducks.
Zapata Falls & Sangre De Cristo Wilderness
On our second day, we visited Zapata Falls which is located just before the Great Sand Dunes park entrance. Zapata Falls is a 25-foot waterfall hidden in a rocky, cave-like crevice on Bureau of Land Management land. It’s a simple 1 mile hike to see it and when we visited it was still frozen over from the winter. It was very cool to see it like this and we had to tread very lightly over the ice to get a closer look.
After we checked out the falls, we went on a hike. The hike was the South Zapata Lake Trail which ends with an alpine lake. Throughout the hike there were areas of snow and ice to dodge. Since I am a southerner, I was happy I only fell twice on the hike. The temperature was perfect and it was hard to believe we were hiking on snow and yet it was so warm. The views were absolutely stunning of the Sangre De Christo Wilderness. As we got higher in elevation, the snow on the ground got heavier and at the point we turned around the snow fall on the ground was fresh with no tracks. We wanted to finish the hike to see the alpine lake but the winds began to kick up and it started getting very cold. It would’ve been amazing to see the lake but I think it was a good call to call it a day.
While we had 3 full days there, we really only had the 2 days to explore because we had a crazy wind event come through on our last day there. We had winds gusting to 45 miles per hour and no visibility for several hours. We actually received an emergency alert from the National Weather Service about the dust storm warning. Since the wind was blowing pretty good, we decided to pull in all the slides on the RV. So, our last day was a bust, but at least we had 2 nice days prior to explore the area.
