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Monday, May 18, 2009

Sand, sand, sand...

I haven't updated everyone in quite a while, mostly because I'm just taking it easy after moving, the end of the spring semester at CU, and a weekend earlier this moneth that we spent eating crawfish. 180 lbs of crawfish.

That's okay, because all those crawfish were worked off this past weekend at the Great Sand Dunes near Hooper, CO. I even had a new down sleeping bag to test, one with which Jeremy generously surprised me. It worked like a charm and it was the first time I've ever been toasty on a camping trip!

The park was beautiful and strange with dunes, water, mountains, trees, and grasslands:



And speaking of water, we went off the beaten path and realized we were going to have to cross a barely above freezing cold stream of snowmelt water. This was probably the weirdest and most fun thing we could have never expected. :P


The flora and fauna were interesting too, having adapted to the sandy, hot, steep landscape. These neat trees had "eyes" on their bark:

There was also some pretty unique wildlife, though they ventured out after dark so the only evidence they left were their tracks in the sand. However, these little guys are familiar:


The sleeping bag! All ready for a long night's rest after the days activities of running up adn down dunes. Well, crawling up and speeding down...

This shot is Jeremy's and I think it's just awesome:

2 comments:

Brown Sugar said...

i love sand....especially in dune form. would those trees with eyes be aspen trees?....i would be surprised to see them in that area, but that's what it looks like at first glance...how far are they from you?...cause when i go to colorado, i'll want to go there again some time.

TJ said...

Adam, I think they might be. I googled and found out that there are aspen groves in the area more near the creeks. I would be surprised to see them in this particular location as it was sand and steep sand at that! That being said, the flora and fauna that have adapted methods to survive on the actual dunescape are pretty awe-inspiring. I think they said the only mammal that lives in the actual dunescape is a rat with water storing properties! And it wasn't too bad of a drive to the Dunes, they are a little bit out of Hooper, CO.