The Shit You Find Out from the National Park Website: Here you would find out that Great Sand Dunes National Park also includes some sort of preserve, and it is located somewhere in Colorado. Turns out it was also turned into a National Park under the careful watch of Billy Clinton, who vehemently denies that the blowjobs he received from Great Sand Dunes (which was at the time just a lowly national monument) had anything to do with its redesignation as a full-on, raging boner, very hardcore national park.
The Shit You Find Out When You Get There: Great Sand Dunes is sandy. Like, very, very sandy. Probably the sandiest place I’ve ever been to, and I’ve been to Kuwait, which is just sand, oil, rich Arabs, and indentured servants who “work” for the rich Arabs. But mostly, Kuwait is sand. (Bad sand, at that: I heard that they can’t even use it to make glass, or even concrete, because it’s totally shitty sand. So, ironically, they must import the sand they need for concrete.) And after living there a year, and being at Great Sand Dunes for two days, I can say that maybe Great Sand Dunes is sandier. Let me tell you this for sure: if I had a vagina, it would have been packed to the hilt, and then I probably would’ve been moody.
J. and I camped the first night, taking a slight refuge from the sand by pitching our tent on soil and near trees. But we did have to trek through sand to get there. And might I add that, for a place with a lot of sand, they also have a lot of mosquitoes. (J. ended up with ass-bites. You know what the fuck I mean – don’t make me explain it.) The next day, though, watch out. Sand here we come. We hiked to the top of a sand dune, called High Dune, armed with the knowledge that it was not the highest dune in the park, just the second highest. I guess that’s why it’s just called High Dune. Nevertheless, we hiked the 1.15 miles to the top in the lightning quick time of (roughly) 1 hour and 45 minutes.
We planned on getting water at the Medano Creek, near the base of the dunefield we had just hiked into, but J. felt it was a bad idea as some children were playing in the creek. I was armed with a water filter that is designed to remove hyper small particles of dirt, as well as the pain-inducing protozoa giardia, but J. rightly refused the offer to drink mountain fresh creek water as science has yet to design a filter that removes children’s cooties (as well as the disgusting tastes of both their innocence and lack of cynicism).
The Thing I Never Expected to See but Then Did: The Dune-Accessible Wheelchair, which I believe the visitor center hands out for free to handicapables, so that they, too, may experience sand. Lots and lots of sand.
The Pinnacle Achievement of 30,000
Cumulative Years of Human
Civilization: A Wheelchair that
Can Go in Sand!
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