Great Sand Dunes National Park holds the tallest dunes in North America, a 30-square-mile sea of sand rising up to 750 feet against the jagged Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Mosca, Colorado. Climb the ridgeline to Star Dune or sandboard down the slopes, then cool off in seasonal Medano Creek at the dune base. Spring through early summer is prime, when snowmelt feeds the creek's wide, beachy flow.
Great Sand Dunes Visitor Center, 11999 State Highway 150, Mosca, CO 81146
Canyons & deserts
Canyons & deserts
Canyons & desertsCurated guides that feature Great Sand Dunes National Park.
63 placesAll 63 of America's national parks in one place: the geysers and canyons, glaciers and giant sequoias, coral reefs and live volcanoes the country set aside for everyone. From the Grand Canyon to the Everglades to the wilds of Alaska, this is the complete collection, each one worth building a whole trip around.
21 placesAlpine lakes, fourteeners, and golden aspen along the spine of the West. The Rockies at their most iconic: the Maroon Bells mirrored in their lake, the Tetons rising straight off the valley floor, Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road, the red spires of the Garden of the Gods, and Idaho's serrated Sawtooths over Redfish Lake. From Colorado's San Juans to the Wyoming Tetons, Montana's Glacier, and the Idaho high country, with high passes and old mining towns in between.
15 placesWhere to go when you want the Milky Way instead of a glow on the horizon. Fifteen places with genuinely dark skies, from the least light-polluted park in the lower 48 to a 9,200-foot volcano above the cloud layer, an Appalachian ridge with a 360-degree horizon, and an Alaskan hot spring under the aurora.
