Sand Dunes and Wild Horses

Last weekend, Ryan and I made the journey to Mosca, CO to the Great Sand Dune National Park. Several people had suggested that we go and see the giant sand dunes nested in the mountains there.

love this cloud. 

artsy pic

The Dunes were enormous and seemed so out of place in front of such picturesque mountains. As the legend goes/Wikipedia says:

"The dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, flowing through the San Luis Valley. Over the ages, westerly winds picked up sand particles from the river flood plain. As the wind lost power before crossing the Sangre de Cristo Range, the sand was deposited on the east edge of the valley. This process continues, and the dunes are slowly growing. The wind changes the shape of the dunes daily."

Pretty interesting. God is so creative.

On Friday afternoon, we set out to climb to the highest part of the dunes. As soon as our feet hit the sand, we realized it was probably not going to be the easiest hike of our lives. There were spots in the sand where our feet would sink to our ankles with each step, while other portions were packed and easier to climb. It was a long haul up to the top. The highest dune is about 750 ft high and we are pretty sure the one we climbed was 650. 

Mountains behind the dunes.

The sun coming through the clouds onto the valley was beautiful.

please note the amount of sand that blew into Ry's hair at the top. 

He's pretty happy about it. 

Coming down off the dunes was easily the most fun part of the process. It was really fun to sprint down the side of the dunes barefoot. It was almost 6p.m. when we came down so the sand was almost cool, whereas they say it can get as hot as 140 degrees in the middle of the day.

I realize I look like a crazy person here, but please note how far down my left ankle is in the sand.

We camped out with a great view of the dunes from our campsite on Friday night. On Saturday, we decided we may never climb the dunes again unless we had sleds to ride back down on.

With this in mind and the rest of the weekend left, we decided to see what we thought about New Mexico.  Ryan researched Taos, NM on his phone and decided that might be our best bet distance-wise with some things we could do.

New Mexico was full of pueblo buildings and the attractions we saw were a bit anti-climatic, but we only have Taos to go by. We did eat some delicious authentic New Mexican food on saturday including  sopapillas and honey. That was easily our best meal all weekend. Our other NM highlight was seeing this:

This is the view from the Rio Grand Gorge Bridge. I was freaking out a little from how high it was and from how the bridge shook when cars drove over. I kept about 2 feet between me and the railing at all times. Eek. It was a long way down. About 650 feet to be exact. 

Even though we did not find the adventure in Taos that we were hoping for,we did see WILD HORSES running along the highway on our way back to Denver on Sunday! We had seen the sign on our way to Taos, but assumed there was no way we would actually see wild horses running around. It was amazing! A whole herd of them, precious babies included, ran across the highway and then ran through the field beside us. They were gorgeous and we were so shocked that we did not get any pictures. If you are wondering what this looked like, I googled wild horses in CO and this is pretty much exactly what we saw. I loved how they kicked up so much dust.

This weekend we are traveling to Breckenridge and Golden to watch the bike race that is coming through Colorado right now. If you know about Ryan's love for the Tour de France, this makes perfect sense.

In other news, I started subbing this week and I am scheduled to sub every day this week, with many days in the coming weeks already booked! I prayed to get a couple days in this week since school just started and God answered exceedingly, abundantly more than I asked! I am so very thankful. 

Thanks for reading!