Duned

When my best friends and I drove out to Colorado from NC, one of the things they were dying to do was go sand boarding at the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Sadly whenever we got to Colorado we didn't have enough time to drive all the way down there before they had to fly back home. Well I finally got to make up for that this week (my friends were pretty jealous) and got to go sand boarding with the outdoor recreation crew at UCCS, aka SOLE. They have a bunch of trips planned every semester that any student can go on, and since I'm an NSE student, we get some money to go towards the trips which is awesome. I left early Saturday morning and carpooled with two other students going who I didn't know at all but we ended up becoming friends by the end of the day. The drive from UCCS is about 2.5 hours and once we got down there we rented sand boards and hit the dunes. It was like nothing I've ever seen before, there were literal mountains made of sand that we had to trek up and then got to board back down. Our guides were a ton of fun and made the whole experience really lighthearted and goofy. We decided to hike all the way up to the top of the high dune which took a while and was honestly exhausting but the view and the ride down were way worth it. Sand boarding itself is a lot easier than any other form of boarding and its definitely a bit more forgiving when we crashed. After messing around on the dunes for a while the 6 of us on the trip decided to hike up and check out Zapata falls. Its a waterfall that cuts through a cave and flows out into the open and its located only 30 mins away from the dunes. That was a really cool detour and definitely a sight to see. Only in Colorado can you go from a hot sand dune to a cold waterfall inside of a cave in less than an hour. It was an awesome day and I'm really glad I got to experience it. I know for a fact I'll be going back because my friends will bother me for eternity if we don't. Enjoy the pictures.