Livin' Part of Life

Grandeur and Simplicity

Today was a wonderful day. It was our first day where we had minimal driving and had a second night stay in the same campground. We were ready for it. In last year’s trips, we did plenty of one night stays. As Rick booked our 2025 adventures, we have many more 2+ night stays coming up. We are enjoying it today! He saw how much we value down time and having more time to just relax at these wonderful sites; it also gives us more opportunities to revisit and/or explore as we see fit. We’ve already learned that perhaps we need those multi-night stays on our way to/from our major destinations. It not only gives us time to deal with the unexpected (which we have had plenty of this trip), but also take a break from being behind the wheel. After all, we are retired and have nothing but time!! The good news is that we have plenty of leisurely days ahead now that we have begun the National Parks leg of this trip.

Speaking of National Parks – today was Great Sand Dunes!! This park is a mere 20 miles away as the crow flies, and we can see some of it even from our campground. But we were excited to get there up close, and learn more about them.

This is the road approaching the park, and the views were grand the entire way in. As Rick mentioned yesterday, this entire valley is surrounded by stunning mountains!

You could spend all day climbing the dunes. Some were over 600 feet and would take several hours to climb. We did not partake much beyond a few feet, as you see here. We are still feeling the altitude in a meaningful way, and the tough sand climb isn’t our thing. We will save hiking for forests & mountain trails on another day!

We did enjoy learning about how these dunes were formed by the winds and the mountain ranges surrounding the area over 400,000 years. As always, the National Park Service does a great job with education. There is a creek flowing at the edge of the dunes from the mountain runoff… but again we didn’t feel like making the hike back there to see it up close.

We got there early so we nearly had the place to ourselves.

After our adventure, we headed back to the campground, looking forward to nearly a full day of leisure. The weather was gorgeous so we lounged for hours. We initially enjoyed plenty of sun; the wind kicked up during the day (which is normal for this area), and so did the clouds. That made for a very relaxing day with lots of variety while we did our daily puzzles. These include LinkedIn, NYT, Washington Post, Squardle… I can’t believe how much time we spend on this every day, but we love it. We also have done plenty of reading on our kindles. We were saying earlier today how we really enjoy dedicated reading time, because at home we get distracted with so many other things. It has been a wonderfully simple treat of a day.

Sunscreen required for the first part of our lounging… we were layered up a little while later when the wind and clouds moved in! This place is nearly as desolate as Kansas was last year, but the mountains make all the difference.

We soaked up this view all afternoon

Daisy was outside with us on and off, depending on the weather. She doesn’t like to get too warm but she wants to be with us 24/7. But today is a special day as it is her gotcha day! 9 years we have been together… hard to believe. She is one well travelled dog, very spoiled and very much loved.

We are wrapping it up with another wonderful dinner. All of our pre-made meals did make in our fridge/freezer for this trip, so we have plenty of variety. Tonight is red beans & rice with a fantastic bottle of Napa Red. The food prep has been an area where we have really perfected our game for this trip. Good thing, because no one wants to deal with me when I am hangry 🙂

We plan to get to bed early since tomorrow is another travel day to the next National Park!

Grandeur and Simplicity

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