Great Sand Dunes National Park Guide

It makes no sense until you’re standing there: a 30-square-mile sea of sand piled up to 750 feet high — the tallest dunes on the continent — heaped against the jagged Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the middle of the high San Luis Valley. You climb them barefoot (the sand at the top is soft and, in summer afternoons, scorching), then sled or sandboard back down. In late spring, snowmelt feeds Medano Creek at the base into a wide, shallow beach where kids splash under the peaks. And because the valley is so remote and high, the night sky over the dunes is one of the darkest and most star-choked in the country.