Dallas to Dunes

So this day was all about the drive. Google maps said it was going to take 13 hours, but I knew we could cut some time off. We ran into some rush hour getting out of the city limits, but once we were out there were not too many people on the road. There was actually not too much of anything on the roads. We followed Rt 287 for about 8 hours and the most exciting thing was a few funny little towns here and there. This road was taking us within 15-20 miles of Oklahoma. This was particularly annoying to me because Oklahoma is one of the 5 remaining continental states that I haven't been in. I was determined to get there since we were so close, but I couldn't bring myself to drive 20 miles out of the way just to turn around. Instead we drove through the length of the Texas panhandle and then cut off a corner of the Oklahoma panhandle. Mission accomplished.

The drive through New Mexico was actually where we started seeing some change in the geography. We saw a pretty sweet lightning storm over the plains of NM. Then we headed into Colorado, finally. I was pumped to make it there since it is probably my favorite state. We got caught in a downpour for the first hour through CO, but it gave the a much more extreme feel, almost like we had to earn our right of passage to get to the mountains. Then we finally did and it was awesome.

We started getting into a little bit of a time crunch because I wanted to get to the dunes before sunset. We made a very quick dinner/refuel stop and made our final push to the park. We drove by Blanca Peak, which is one of CO's 14ers. A very impressive peak towering over the surrounding plains. There was a house that had Blanca Peak as it's backyard, and we both agreed it was an awesome view.

Within 20 minutes of the peak, we saw the Great Sand Dunes. Now they sit at the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, so they don't look that impressive from a distance. I was still excited to make it to our destination before sunset. Across the plains leading up to the dunes, there were thunderstorms that were dumping rain. It looked like a scene out of the African plains, something similar to Lion King. We took some awesome pictures of the dunes at sunset and headed to the campsite. From our campsite we were able to look over the dunes, and I could see a storm rolling in. And it hit us hard. Winds were out of control, blowing the tent on top of us as we were trying to sleep. The winds were also blowing sand under our fly and into the tent. On top of that, it was pouring rain. It all made for an interesting night to sleep, but the ULTRA must go on, so it's dawn patrol in the morning for a dune hike. ULTRA day 6/39: COMPLETE

JM