July 21 - Day 39
There have been many great things about this trip; like visiting with friends and family, seeing things we have never seen before, and being able to try new things. Today we tried something new. Tomorrow we’ll see something new.
A few highlights from the day:
We started the day at Great Sand Dunes National Park, which is where we camped last night. While we have Dunes in Oregon and have climbed Cape Kiwanda, we don’t have dunes like these! And what better activity to do on large dunes than to try sand boarding and sand sledding. Despite it being something new, the whole family participated. I think we will be finding sand for the next 3 days in places we never knew existed, but thankfully we could each take a quick shower in our RV before heading out.
Following our sand boarding and sand sledding adventure, we stopped by the National Park’s visitor center. Ilena and Obadiah were thrilled as they could once again (#9 of the trip) become Junior Rangers. OB is hoping that his vest will be full of Junior Ranger badges by the time we get back to Oregon.
Upon leaving Great Sand Dunes NP, we drove north to Colorado Springs and visited the Garden of the Gods. It reminded us of Smith Rocks in Oregon. Becca and the kids toured the visitor center there while I stayed back and worked on the logistics of having our RV serviced tomorrow since we’ve put a significant number of miles on it since we left Portland. Getting a vehicle serviced is much harder than usual when it is 1) your summer home, 2) you have a family in tow, and 3) you have a very tight timeframe. We’ll see how the logistics work out tomorrow.
We ended the day at a KOA campground, just south of Colorado Springs. As I mentioned previously, we are staying at a number of KOAs on our journey to give everyone a change of pace and to give ourselves a place to catch up and do laundry. The kids were able to play in the pool/splash pad, Becca did a number of loads of laundry, and I caught up on some work.
A few pictures from the day:
