Sitting on a folding chair, listening to yet another Zoom call and strategically muting my microphone to muffle the aftermath sounds of Taco Tuesday coming from a family member in the all too close bathroom, I had a revelation. It wasn’t about the bathroom. Hopefully it was a little more profound than that. The revelation was that I can change the world, and you can too!
Sounds crazy, right? I know. But most things I do lately are a little crazy. What’s crazier is that these outlier activities I have been doing are consistently making my life better.
When I started this trip I was worried. To be real, I was scared. Scared about losing my job, ruining my marriage, getting sick on the road, my kids falling behind in school, …. the list was long. The only way I could get past these fears was to name them, write them down and find mechanisms to minimize these fears. One of my biggest fears was missing out. Specifically, missing out on my connections with my friends and family. The mechanisms I wrote down for this fear were: Blogging, Making YouTube Videos, connecting with Facebook, making phone calls and sending postcards. All of these have helped me and my family. The one that resonated the most for me was sending postcards. So far along this trip I have sent over 200 postcards to friends and family. Not only has writing the postcards helped me feel connected, but the responses from those that received them have consistently delighted me.
Now, back to this Zoom meeting, and how we …can change the world. Not everyone chose my weird “isolation” that comes with traveling the country with your immediate family in a 400 square foot space. Most of the population has been thrust into isolation to save their lives and the lives of their loved ones from a once in a hundred-year pandemic. Some of the quotes I heard from my peers and friends on this Zoom call were:
“When will it get back to normal?”
“I miss connecting with friends.”
“I am an extrovert’s extrovert and this pandemic is so draining.”
“Really, I’m just bored as hell.”
The people on this call had unique situations and lives. But, these same common feelings are being experienced around the globe by many.
So how can we change the world? CONNECT!
Call to action #1: Send me your name and address so I can connect with you. If you do, I commit to getting you a postcard.
Call to action #2: Connect with someone around you in a meaningful way.
Together I know we can change the world for the better.
Today we ventured into the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was about a 3 hour drive each way. The one thing this trip has taught us is not to be afraid of driving each day. We very rarely made trips longer than 1.5 hours at home. We saw a few animals in the campground this morning, which is always fun!
The park offers some hiking, a campground, the dunes, and a creek. The creek is usually dry in August, from what we were told. You can sled down the sand dunes, but the park claims you need a specialized board. Apparently snow sled and cardboard will not work well. There are a few stores to rent these boards from in the towns of Alamosa (which was not on our drive in), Hooper, and Blanca. We drove through Blanca and didn’t see any signs for board rentals. It was the 2nd closest rental to the park entrance, so we were hoping we wouldn’t miss the last store. The other rental is at a store right outside the park entrance. The store is called Oasis and it is open seasonally. They offer sand boards (stand up kind like snow boards) and sand sleds. Rental is $20/day/board and you need to return it by 6:00pm. They also provide you with a thing of wax for the bottom of your board.
There was quite a line to rent the boards. The store’s interior was closed, so everything was rented/ordered from the outdoor windows. The line moved slowly, but surely. It took awhile because there was a rental form to fill out, the deposit to sign, rental fee, and then the instructions. In the store’s parking lot, they had three portalets and a 2 pump gas station (no diesel). The store also offered ice, ice cream (cones and sandwiches), some hot food items, and convenience items (postcards, sunscreen, sunglasses, etc.). There were not any picnic benches around though. (TIP: Stop and use the portalets here. The Visitor Center is closed due to COVID and there could be a long wait at the park.)
Oasis store
The sky, both on the drive in and at the park, was a little hazy due to smoke from wildfires. The parking lot closest to the dunes was packed! Luckily, right when we got to the end of our first lap, we found a spot. I was driving home, so I changed into my sandals since I didn’t want sand stuck in my shoe for the whole drive home (big mistake). Everyone else stayed in gym shoes and left their Crocs for later. There is about 1/4-1/2 mile walk through sand to get to the dune area. It would have been great if there was a boardwalk there. Although this might not work well since the Ute Native Americans called this area “sowapopheuveha”* or, the land that moves back and forth. With the sand blowing around it might just cover the boardwalk.
The book stated the tallest sand dune was “750 feet and 3.8 miles (one way) difficult trudge to the top.”* So, we weren’t doing that! We stayed towards the front of the dunes, the smaller ones. It is quite the work-out to climb up the dunes to slide back down. Ben and the boys tried the sand board, but I stuck to the sand sled. The boys did pretty well for their first experience on a stand up board. Everyone had a few tumbles in the sand, but had fun sledding down the dunes!
I had secured my keys and ID in a zipper pocket, but thought on my last run I could video the trip down the dune. Dumb idea. I took the biggest tumble so far and my phone got buried in the sand. Luckily I found it pretty quickly. I would recommend using some sort of cord or something that is attached to both your phone and you, if you want to have it out.
Eventually we were tired and hungry, and began our journey back to the truck. At the parking lot we rinsed off at the outdoor showers. There were two shower poles, each had nozzles at 3 different heights. We ate our picnic lunch in the truck. We were facing the dunes, so we had a nice view. There is a picnic area down the street, but not at the dunes parking lot we were in. We could also people watch. Ben stated everyone coming in looked excited and happy (think Disney world), but coming out everyone looked exhausted and were dragging. We were definitely tired, but it was a good experience.
The park cautions that the sand can get up to 150 degrees F. I don’t think it was quite that warm when we were there, but it definitely got very hot. My sandals were not the right choice, as the sand kept sliding in or covering my feet as we walked. In the beginning, the temperatures were fine. However, on the walk back, I had to take multiple breaks to keep my feet out of the sand and stood on a board. By the time we got back, the sides of my feet and under my big toes were red and I had a couple of blisters. I’m not sure if the blisters were simply from sand rubbing between my feet and sandals, or from minor burns from the hot sand. Even after the cool water from the outdoor shower and sitting in the truck without shoes on, my feet were still red. I ended up putting aloe on them before bed, but they were still sensitive the next day (and a little the day after that too). I may have lightly burned them. If you go in the summer, I would recommend wearing closed toe shoes (we saw someone wearing boots) so your gym shoes are not saturated with sand. If you really want to wear sandals, I would maybe wear socks with them (and socks with Crocs is honestly one of my biggest no-no’s…but guys, the sand burns!).
After lunch, we drove around. The park isn’t very large in terms of a road driving through it. There was a primitive road and a campground. We headed back out and stopped at Oasis to return our boards. We also bought some ice cream and postcards. We haven’t been able to find any other Great Sand Dunes postcards, so I wish I would have bought a few more.
The boys and I took it easy this morning and explored the town of Gardiner, MT a little bit.
We found an amazing T-shirt shop (OutWest T’s) that carried socks, t-shirts, pajamas, hoodies, hats… I bought a keychain and a small jar of Huckleberry jam. There is a T-Shirt there that I may go back and buy for Nick. They had so many funny designs. They were really nice and explained huckleberries to the boys. Huckleberries are similar in shape to blueberries, but a little smaller. They grow wild, cannot be cultivated, and do not last long once picked. Which is why you see more products with huckleberry in them, than fresh huckleberries for sale. We tried a hard candy and ice cream sandwiches for the boys. Both were a big success.
We mailed some postcards, stopped at a bookstore/coffee shop, and got some groceries before heading home. The bookstore looked like it had nice breakfast sandwiches and they had a frozen coffee (they call it blended). Not a lot of kid books for the boys though, mostly adult and some little kid books.
We grabbed bison burgers for dinner, which the kids enjoyed trying. After cleaning up dinner, we headed back into Yellowstone. Ben drove so I could get pictures out the window! Yay for awesome husbands! 🙂
We went to Old Faithful and it was the most congested with cars we had seen so far. There had also been a wreck and construction, which slowed down the drive to a snail’s pace at times. We rushed through the parking lot to get to the geyser and saw a few small spurts and a lot of steam. We waited maybe 10 minutes or so, until the big eruption. It was great! The wind was blowing towards us, so we did get a few misty drops on us.
Ben’s photo of the boys and I. He caught me taking video and photos. 🙂
Next stop was the Grand Prismatic Spring. This was what I had been looking forward to. It was amazing. The colors are just amazing to think that nature can produce such vibrant colors. We parked at Fairy Falls Trail and took the trail over to Prismatic Spring. There is a fork in the trail: straight goes to Fairy Falls Trail, left goes up a hill to Grand Prismatic Spring Overlook. Take the extra 1/4 mile and go up the hill. It gives you a greater vantage point to look down on the colorful spring. There were a lot less people up there too!
We stopped at a waterfall and a few more hot springs on the way back.
