White Sands…Coral Pink Sands…Different Colors Different States

 

April 3rd, 4th,  2014

Kanab, UT…a little green valley in the desert was our home for this night. The Hitch-N-Post Campground was a cozy, in the middle of town, campground. Two other campgrounds available, but as usual, I just can’t see paying double the price, just to park for the night. The old timer, at the desk, was a character and easy to talk to. He reminded us that US 89 North would be closed from 8:30am to 11:30am the next morning. Our journey was in that direction. We would be turning off US 89N, just after the construction. Our destination was Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. After visiting White Sands National Monument in New Mexico, we just had to see if there was much of a difference in the color of the sand.

Friday morning, we naturally were up early to beat the road closure. We actually had a little extra time and I decided to look on line to see if their were any geocaches close by. Yup, there was and we packed up and drove maybe six hundred feet and walked across the highway to ground zero. We found the cache hidden close to a pile of old wagon wheels on display. One more tiny victory for our personnel challenges. A mile or so out of town, we could see why they closed the road down for a few hours a day. They are blasting a mountain side for another highway lane. The landscape now becomes different again with sandstone cliffs and cave openings scattered among the cliffs. A tourist stop even had a cave that you could visit. It was too early and we’ve already been a mile and a half below ground anyways, back in Carlsbad Caverns.

Left onto some county back road to the State Park. The land was now changed again, it was open with sage brush and trees that were not very tall, ten to fifteen feet, but looking very old in age. We spotted several herds of deer feeding just off the road. We were the only vehicle on the road. Finally, after twelve miles we arrived at the junction for the Park. The BLM (Bureau of Land Management) had very large areas setup to accommodate trailers, campers, ORV (Off Road Vehicles) and such. This wasn’t part of the state park, but the dunes were right off of the parking areas. The State Park Visitor Center wasn’t opened, but we could do a self registration for camping or day use. I didn’t have the exact change, so we contemplated for a few minutes and decided to park there, take a short walk and checkout the dunes. Yes, there is a pink hue to the sand, from the iron oxide and other minerals. No one showed up at the Visitor Center by 9am. Why stay here when we could drive two miles back the (BLM) site and do the same thing.

I set up my tripod with my remote wireless trigger and we walked a long way out into the dunes. I was surprised to see how far I could take a picture of ourselves. I must say, that if the sun had been out in full force the pink in the sand would have been more predominate. We returned to the camper, emptied half of the dunes out of our shoes, had lunch and spent a good part of the afternoon sorting out those 500 plus pictures taken in the last two days.

We drove up to Bryce  Canyon some 75 miles away for the our night’s stay. This night we didn’t stay in the camper. The elevation here at Bryce Canyon is 7,000 feet and the high temp. was 41 degrees. The Ruby Inn was are host for the night.

Note: As I write this blog Saturday morning, the outside lower for the night was only 31 degrees, better than I expected.

That is what we saw and did!

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