Xavier Scales A Great Dune
Greetings to all.
Today we woke to crisp air and the occasional hummingbird buzzing through the air. We did not camp, as Xavier has been asking to do, but glamped in the Great Sand Dunes Lodge.
As the Sand Dunes are remote, the closest amenities (other than the Lodge) are thirty minutes in any direction, we packed enough food for lunch and dinner on Saturday.
With breakfast in our bellies, we headed out to find a place to park, then set up a base camp before the park grew too crowded and the sand too hot.
We stopped at a rental place and picked up a sand board. We thought it would be a lot of fun. As it turned out, it was a bust. Neither Xavier nor I could get the board to go more than a few feet down the hills. Rebecca had the best run of us all with a record-setting (for the family) ten feet, give or take.
Xavier did not seem to mind. The Dunes did not call to him, but the stream of glacier melt skirting the Dunes did. He wanted to return to base camp to get his sand toys and go dam up the river.
We dug a number of trenches, but the cold, shallow water had a mind of its own and frequently undid all our work.
Xavier soon met several other boys with the same plan but having better success. They invited him to help and he offered them his shovels and buckets.
Eventually, the boys moved twenty or so feet away from the stream and dug a large hole. To their surprise, they found water under the sand about a foot down. This opened up new games to play.
The storm clouds, which had been growing throughout the morning and early afternoon, turned threatening. The family of boys Xavier played with decided to pack it in, as did we.
We ended the day with a picnic before starting our long four hour journey back to Denver.
We all were tired. We ate a late dinner at a restaurant, then came home. After unloading the perishable items from the car, we all took showers to get the sand out of everywhere, then hit the sheets.