A Sunset Stroll
Our second day in the desert. I can’t believe how cold it gets at night in the desert. It doesn’t retain heat at all and my bedroom was really cold last night. We waited until it warmed up a bit in the morning before we headed out. We had noticed that some of the parking lots had barbecues with covered picnic tables, so Dad thought he’d bring some burgers and cook them there. It was a good plan, and we packed up some salads and other small snacks before we headed out. It was only when we got there that Dad realized no one had actually grabbed the burgers, so there went that idea. We did a couple of things in the morning, the
first being a short walk along a boardwalk, about half a kilometre long. There were some signs telling you about the plant and animal life you might see but, as it was still winter, everything was dead or hiding, so it was kind of hard to distinguish one plant from another. The second thing was to stop to eat what snacks we’d brought and to do some tobogganing, since Isaac loved it so much. Dad and I also wrote some messaged in
the side of a dune, which is quite a bit harder than it looks, especially if you’re writing big letters. After we finished up there, we wanted to do a short hike, but it seemed that all the small hikes were closed off for the winter, which was unfortunate. Instead we headed back to the trailer for the afternoon and an early dinner of the burgers we’d forgotten. At around 4:30pm, we drove back into the monument for the sunset hike/tour. There was a pretty big group of people on the tour with us, but the park ranger spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. However, most of the stuff she was talking about, such as the
formation of the dunes and the uniqueness of the plant and animal life, I had heard in the informational video the day before, so I spent most of my time looking around at the dunes. The tour didn’t move very fast and we covered about 300 metres in and hour, but we saw some kit-fox prints, which was pretty neat, and the guide told us how the natives would live in the area by digging up water from the ground. Apparently, there’s moisture in the dunes year-round, even during the dry season. Because scientists have also noticed that the cottonwood trees that grow in the dunes seem to be aligned, it is suspected that there is an underground river under all the gypsum. The sunset on the dunes was very pretty to watch, and although it got pretty cold near the end, I enjoyed the tour. Peace out m8s.
