Great Sand Dunes National Park

To begin our summer vacation, I picked Kaija up early from girls camp and took the kids to met up with two of my sisters (Barbara and Anne) and their families at the Oklahoma City Temple. Taking this southern route is new to us (I think we went through Albuquerque one time), but it was a nice diversion for making the trek out west and I had the added bonus of having extra people around to help with the driving and the dispersing of children! It makes a world of difference to travel together and having the awesome perk of traveling with cousins and the extra perk of having a sister in a motor home- which, yes if you were wondering makes it so everyone wanted to ride with her- thanks Anne for being so cool!

Day one took us to the beautiful Great Sand Dunes National Park, and honestly I had never even heard of it until my sisters mentioned that they had been there a couple of times. Though, in my defense it has only been a National Park since 2004 so I don't feel quite as lame for not realizing it even existed! It is very nicely situated near Alamosa CO. So there were flat lands and mountains and all sorts of diverse and wonderful things to see; one of which was the oil derricks, which Zach informed us, 

"gave him the creeps"- talk about random!!  

We made it  into the campground very late at night so we had no idea what surrounded us until the glory of the morning sunrise.  It is such a lovely place, and the juxtaposition of the sand dunes and the mountain ranges and the flat lands was truly breathtaking.

I opted to rest in the shade with Spencer and watch everyone else make the journey up the dunes, it was a perfect day to be there, the kids enjoyed it immensely and when all was said and done, they came back quite worn out!

 

So there is my brave sister Anne and her two humongous english mastiffs, Bunny and Titan. 

In the background you can see a few of the kids and Barb's dog C.C.

 Zach, Bella, Robert, Alex, Austin, Alysha and Palmer playing up on the dunes.

Master Eli tired from the trek in the sand

My crazy girls in the sand- see the shade from the shrubs, yep that is where I made my self comfy and enjoyed the cool breeze while they were dying and hiking through the sand! 

(Ha ha ha, I think I got the better deal there!)