With that definition out of the way. Let’s talk about our adventure to the Great Sand Dunes eh?

A week before the trip, rumors were spreading around our youth group that there was an overnight trip to the sand dunes… started by two of us. Only a three hours drive away from the heart of Colorado, it was a reasonable place to go spend the night in the wilderness and see the next wonder of the world. As the week passed by, the roster fluctuated up and down. When Sunday rolled around (departure date), people started laying out their excuses.. Out of the few, there was only two that were going for sure no matter what the count was.

Due to delayed responses and excuses, the official trip started a few hours behind schedule. It was intended for us to leave our church at 3pm, be at the dunes before sundown, set up camp and enjoy a night under the stars. Instead, we departed from Denver at 7pm. I know what you’re thinking… its all part of the ‘adventure’ right? As we head out of Denver, southbound on I-25, Google Maps was loaded and an estimated time of 3 hours displayed brightly on the LCD screen in the night.

Talking about life, TNTT, and everything in between, the hours passed by in minutes. It was time to turn into the park.. It was understood beforehand that the only road into the Sand Dunes National Park was all paved and easy to get to. As we drove and drove, the road twisted and turned; but we had confident  that Google Maps could not have been wrong since we were in the correct vicinity of the park. Into the night, the road got smaller and smaller. The finely paved road slowly turned into gravel, then sand. “We are on the right road!” we convinced ourselves as we drove deeper into the unpaved road. The time was… about 11pm.

Not only did the road become unpaved, but hills and valleys rapidly turned into inclines and trenches. Snow covered path, our Tacoma made it through the first few hills. It was not clear at this point if this was the road that we were suppose to be on. Pushing on as Google Maps tells us to keep going, we traversed countless of hills. Snow covered path quickly turned into ice covered track. Leveled path quickly turned into walls and shear drops on a small one-way track. At one point, it was realized that there was no turning back for one slip on the ice covered path, it would be the end for us.

Hearts thumping, and mouths spitting out random conversations to keep our minds off of what was at hand, we drove for two hours off-road hoping to see some kind sign, for turning back was not an option. After about 1.5 hours of rock climbing with slipping with the truck, we finally made it to a sign that said… “Welcome to Medano Pass Primitive Road”. We were not at the sand dunes, but we were somewhere! It was a sign of relief that we were not blindly following faint trails in the mountains. The name quickly rang a bell for prior research told us that the Medano Pass is the off-road path that people take during the summer… not in the dead of winter.

The ‘adventure’ did not stop there. On the sign, there was a map that had a destination pointed at the Great Sand Dunes. Between where we were and our destination was 22 miles of additional rugged off-road with about numerous river crossings. We had no choice but to take on the trail in the dark of night. Coming up to our first river crossing, we stop the car and surveyed the Medano river. It was impossible to see the bottom of the river at night. So we stopped there and pitched tent…. PSYCH! it was our only chance out of there, so the truck was popped into 4x4 with rear differential lock on. BAM! We hit that water like jet skis on the water.. It turned out that the river was not deep at all during the winter.

Long story short. We finally reached the Sand Dunes National Park (picture above) and realized we came in from the forest service road. It was a shorter distance, but by no mean it was faster. We reached our campsite at about 3am, set up tent, slept in the nice and cozy sub-zero bags while the temperature was below freezing outside. Before sunrise, we were up and about doing our morning businesses. As we packed up and headed into the dunes, the sun was just inching over the mountains behind us.

Like all adventures… it was the journey that made it the worthwhile. =]