Great Sand Dunes National Park |
|
|
|
There are not many places in the world where you can do all kinds of beach activities outdoors - build sand castles, sunbathe, play Frisbee or beach volleyball - without a proper waterfront. Great Sand Dunes National Park in southeastern Colorado is one such place. The park has plenty of sand; in fact it includes a 750-foot tall dune--the tallest in the United States. But Mosca Creek, the waterfront, is a shallow, seasonal stream only about 6 inches deep at the beginning of the summer that generally disappears completely by the end of the summer. Another creek in the park, Medano Creek, has an unusual feature of surging waves, up to a foot high, that form as underwater dams made of sand breach minute by minute, release their water, and reform. The wind blowing the sand, which built the dunes over thousands of years, prevents Medano Creek from establishing a permanent streambed today; this instability causes the waves on the creek. The blowing sands also affect hiking, and some hikers wear turbans simply to protect themselves from it. Current Internet Travel Offers for Great Sand Dunes NP...
This article is based on work found at Wikipedia. A list of contributors is available a the original article. This article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 license.
|
|
