Oct. 1-5: San Luis Lake State Park and The Great Sand Dunes

We drove from Canon City to the Great Sand dunes, a distance of about 130 miles, and it only took us about 4 hours. A large part of the drive was along the Rio Grande and like our driving loop of the previous week, the color of the trees were awesome. So we made several stops for photographic opportunities. I wish I could upload all of the pictures onto this blog, but the connections are so slow, that if I can get several on, I feel grateful.



The campsite we stayed at was the San Luis Lake State park. From our campsite, we had a wonderful view of the lake with the dunes and the mountains behind that. On first arriving to the park, we realized that because the season was really over, there were few campers there. Not a problem! Until we tried to fill the motorhome with water, that is. All of the water spigots were on the wrong side of the coach, so we first off had turn around to go down the one way road the wrong way........okay we did that. You do realize that turning around a 40' motorhome actually requires some ingenuity. So we got ourselves set up facing the right way for the water but the wrong way for the road. Even with that we were too far away from the spigot, so we had to get out the extra hoses. Okay fine, no problem. Just as we were ready to screw in the hoses, the campground host came by to say the spigot was turned off for the season...............we then had to drive to another loop in the campground, go down that road the wrong way and finally got connected up to get water.


All that effort finally paid off when we drove into our campsite and looked out the front window. The view of the lake, dunes and mountains was stupendous..........maybe even better than that. So we made a campfire and sat down to relax.






And then the sunset began. And I do mean began...............it lasted about an hour and covered the entire sky. The colors of red, orange and bluish-purple reflected off of the water and the mountains............WOW!



[Double click on pictures to enlarge.]

I know this picture is dark but look closely and you can see the motorhome in the forefront, then the pink of the lake and the mountains in the background.


The Great Sand Dunes were a huge surprise to us in terms of their vastness and height. We thought we would just go to the dunes and take a walk to the top. Ha! The highest peak is 750 feet and by the time we walked through the sand to get to the first dune, we were exhausted. We did manage to climb a mini-dune and then had to sit and rest to admire our effort and the view.



This day was also Yom Kippur and we knew that there would be no synogogue in the area. So our plan was to spend the day on the dunes and meditate. It was a very peaceful and calming way to spend the holiday and we feel that being in nature helped us appreciate the solemnity of the day and be thankful for all that we have been given. We want to wish all of our family and friends a very healthy, happy and peaceful new year. We love you all and miss you.