On August 29 we arrived at the mountain home of Barb’s sister Audrey and her husband Mike Englert.  We had a great time filled with catching up and local sightseeing, including dinner one night in the unincorporated town of Beulah, trips to Pueblo and Colorado City and Florence and the Great Sand Dunes, walks on Englert’s property and around a nearby lake, and a quick visit to the amazing Bishop Castle, a place so unique and surprising that I will save its description for the next blog entry.  Audrey & Mike live in a delightful multilevel A-frame dwelling with a wrought iron staircase.  We stayed in the guest room they have added above their commodious garage that houses, among other things, Mike’s Viper automobile.  We had a lovely time during our visit, with the bonus of getting to see one of Audrey’s daughters, Michelle, and her boyfriend Tim,  on our last evening.

The Great Sand Dunes merit a few more words, adapted from the Wikipedia description:

The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America, rising about 750 feet from the floor of the San Luis Valley on the western base of the Sangre de Cristo Range, covering about 19,000 acres.

The dunes were formed from sand and soil deposits of the Rio Grande and its tributaries, flowing through the San Luis Valley. Over the ages, westerly winds picked up sand particles from the river

There are several streams flowing on the perimeter of the dunes. The streams erode the edge of the dune field, and sand is carried downstream. The water disappears into the ground, depositing sand on the surface. Winds pick up the deposits of sand, and blow them up onto the dune field once again. The direction of the wind greatly affects the dune type. The winds normally go from southwest to northeast, however during the late summer months, the wind direction reverses causing reversing dunes. This wind regime is part of the reason why the dunes are so tall.

Hiking (and sledding, etc.) on the Dunes is permitted, with the warning that the sand can get very hot in the summer, up to 140 °F. The area gets snow in the winter.

Getting to the dunes requires walking across the wide and shallow Medano Creek, which normally flows only from spring to early summer.  Due to the unusual amount of rain the entire region has received this year, we found water in the creek.