I love Colorado...and some other states, too.: Bruneau Dunes

A little off the road..about 20 miles....but well worth it.

I've been to a few sand dunes and I have to say...these are my favorite so far.

At first..I'm like...I think we went the wrong way....there aren't any sand dunes way out here......
but Tim wouldn't give up.

So glad he's more tenacious than I am.

When I first saw the dunes, I wasn't too impressed....because from a distance they just looked like vegetation covered hills.

And there was absolutely no one around..when it was the middle of July.....what?

This was a bad, bad year for fires in Idaho.

When we arrived we could see that a recent fire had burned right up to the sand dunes on multiple side of the dunes....and now I knew why there were no campers or tourists.

You can see the burned prairie to the left in this picture, which burned right up to and into parts of one of the camp sites.

And then there's the burned prairie behind the hawk.

You can see one of the camp sites in the background of the picture below.

And we did stay and camp on this night...and what an interesting night it turned out to be.

While only a handful of people showed up to scale the sides of the dunes, we were the only ones to pull into a camp site.

...That was until about midnight...

A car arrived...drove around and around..shining their lights all over the place.....ok..ok...we're awake now.

He parks not far from us....really???

He gets out..sets up his tent and then we hear all this yelling...get! get! go away! leave me alone!

Yikes! Is he getting eaten over there.

Pretty soon I hear the distinct sound of raccoons.
Ohh...that's what he was yelling about.

Ok, I can go back to sleep.

30 minutes later....get! get! go away! leave me alone!

The second time of yelling in the middle of the night set us a little on edge.

So, Tim had to make sure that the gun was a little closer to his side.
Neither of us got much sleep the rest of that night.

But who says adventure is a bad thing.
I wouldn't have a story to tell without it.
Right?

Back to the daytime story.

When we drive passed the first little dune that comes up along the dirt road...the kid in me comes out and Tim has to stop for me....I make a run for it....thinking I could conquer this little, little thing in an instant.....well that's not what happened......splat...in an instant I was flat out on the ground.

I sure didn't get very far, either.

Even though I was running as hard and as fast as I could for those 30 feet of slow motion, energetic moments of enthusiasm.