Sands and Sunrises

 Sand, yes that is a color


Please bear with me while I explain what I have been up to.


On Christmas Day I flew with my family to Las Vegas and we drove to Death Valley

When we left Las Vegas we had to drive for 2 hours through a desert with no sign of civilization except for some correctional facility in the Middle of Nowhere, Nevada.

Have you ever been to

Photo courtesy of MB Post

If you have then you know that it's in the middle of nothing, nowhere, surrounded by even less, but it is the color of sand... everywhere...

My footprints.. Death Valley National Park, 12/26/14

even at night...

 Mosaic Canyon., at night, 12/25/14

This post is about sand because from the moment we left the city of Las Vegas to about three hours after we left Death Valley that is all there was to see.

But it's really not that bad.  It turns out sand can be fun.  We spent a lot of time walking  in it, up it, rolling down it, and enjoying the sun rise over it.

I know it sounds kind of desolate and lonely out there but it can be gorgeous, fun, and was a really cool place to visit.

I expected the entire place to be covered in sand, it is the desert after all, however I was surprised to learn that it had more rocks and plants than sand!

We wanted to see at least some sand dunes. We decided the best time to see the dunes would be at sunrise (I don't think I agreed to this).  We trudged out of bed at 6:00 AM, in the unseasonalably and unreasonably cold morning.  Despite the early wakeup, I would recommend this to anyone.  It was incredible!

Worth it right????

I wanted to know why there weren't a lot of sand dunes. I did some research and it turns out less than one percent of the desert in Death Valley is covered in sand dunes.  There has to be a certain environment for sand dunes to form.  The recipe is sand, wind, and a place for the sand to collect.  The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes are the most popular dunes in the park and its easy to see why.  Some of the dunes rise to about 100 feet, and they run across a wide area and seem like they go on forever, with mountains on all sides.
It turns out that there are three types of dunes in the Mesquite Dunes area, (who knew more than one existed?) which is apparently and ancient lakebed.
Crescent dunes are wide and form under winds that blow from one direction.  They also move more quickly over the desert than any other dune.  We saw many crescents, but sadly, did not actually photograph one.  They were great for sledding and rolling down.

Linear dunes are the next variety. They are straight and long sand ridges that run forever in a line.  It forms as the result of wind coming from more than one direction and can extend for miles, and  were really hard to walk on without starting mini avalanches along the way.

Crossing linear dune in Death Valley

There are also star dunes. They are sand dunes with a steep side in three or more directions off of a center point.  They grow up instead of out to the sides, and tend to be tall and on the edges of the dunes.

Since I didn't know at the time that there were more than one kind of dune I didn't know what I was looking at until afterwards, so sadly I don't know what types I saw.



When we left Death Valley, I thought my sand-colored adventures were over.  I was wrong.  A few days later, my dad and I were at a music store in Fort Bragg, California.

                           He picked up a balalaika, which is a Russian instrument. We ended up buying it and a music book to go with it. Needless to say I am obsessed and it is more my instrument now than his. (I fully intend to have learned it by the time I get home.)

My new obsession
photo courtesy of Accent Music

Happy New Year and here's to sand-colored vacations!