Great Sand Dunes National Park is surreal in the way only America seems to produce without apology: mountains behind, desert floor, then dunes rising like someone imported a beach without the ocean. We camped at Pinon Flats, leveled with confidence earned from past humiliation, and walked the sand until my calves filed a formal complaint.<\/p>\n
Biscuit loved the creek. He did not love the hot sand. I carried water like a responsible adult and still forgot one of my own rules: close-toed shoes exist for a reason.<\/p>\n
At sunset the sky went pink and gold and I remembered a Greek ferry decades ago, diesel and salt, no phone, just horizon. I am older now and travel with a house on wheels and a dog who expects dinner at reasonable hours. Both versions of me were lucky.<\/p>\n
Pack electrolytes. Start hikes early. Let the overlooked parks humble you gently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Medano Creek, sand in every crevice, and a sunset that made the Aegean feel close in memory only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road-parks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mcmarlington.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}