Full of Sand at White Sand Dunes National Monument

This post is for Tuesday, August 7.

From Rachel:

First I am going to fill in for Monday. Mesa Verde was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo neat. I loved it.  What it was is ruins of houses that were built into a cliff thousands of years ago. The only way to get up to some of them at the time was climbing up holes dug into the cliffs called "toe and hand holes". There were tons of ladders. First, we all walked down to Spruce Tree house. Well, I didn't walk. I got pushed in a wheelchair. The path was really steep and going back up my parents had a problem pushing me. I tried to help by turning the wheels with my hands but I don't know how successful I was.

Sarah Ann, Taylor, and mom also went on a tour of Cliff Palace but it involved a lot of stairs and climbing so we decided that wouldn't be the best match for me with my broken foot. Dad, Christian, and I drove the circle route and got out at some stops so I could take some pictures. The dwellings were really cool. Some of them were really high up on the cliff face.

Back at the campsite, we saw tons and tons of deer. I even saw a few baby deer. They were soooooooo
cute. The bathrooms at the campground were really annoying because the lights would flick off every few seconds. If you were in there when it was dark, this flicking wasn't too helpful. That night we did laundy while I wrote postcards and we roasted hotdogs over a fire. Dad, Taylor, and I went to a ranger program.

The next morning, we got up and drove. It was a far drive. My mom kept telling us not to get our hopes up because we wanted to sled down sand dunes but we weren't sure if we would have time. Luckily, we made it there in time. During the car ride, we listened to Harry Potter and Christian watched Cars about twenty million times. I am very sick of that movie.

White Sand Dunes National Monument was basically just what it sounds like - white - snow white - sand dunes. We rented sleds there. To our surprise, even though it was really hot outside, the sand dunes weren't hot. The gypsum sand doesn't hold any heat. Sledding down them was really fun. True - it was hard to get up the steep, steep sand dunes especially since I couldn't walk. I had to quite literally crawl up. We waxed the bottom of the sleds so they would go down easier. We sat down on the sled and slid down pretty quickly. It was really fun.

After sledding, I discovered that my boot for my foot was filled to the brim with sand. I sitll haven't gotten all the sand out of it. We drove another hour and slept at some campground in which my mom forgot where the bathrooms were so we spend about twenty minutes wandering around looking for the bathrooms. I went to bed that night quite worn out after the long, long day.