Day 22
This post is a part of a series on my three and a half week adventure road tripping to the west coast with three of my best friends in the Summer of 2018. I was challenged to write every day of the trip to document the adventure, so I did! My aim was to be as real and raw as possible while I was documenting and writing. Because of this, some days, I was honestly just not interested in writing, so I wrote very matter of fact “this is what we did.”
Check out the first part of the series here: Day 1 or check out a list of the days here: WCT2018
I wrote everything on my phone’s notes app, and below is word-for-word what I wrote each day. Nothing taken out, no elaborations.
As part of the challenge, I also made sure to take at least one picture every day, and each evening when I wrote, I picked one photo that I wanted to feature from that day. Some days it was hard to pick them, and other days I had only one to pick from.
A couple of notes: Each day that I wrote, I wrote the date, where I was writing from, and how many pictures I had taken that day. So the location doesn’t always reflect where the picture was taken.
August 12th Oasis Campground - Just outside Great Sand Dunes National Park Pictures taken: 21
Very sadly, I didn’t write anything for this day or any day after the 11th. I purposely didn’t look at my writing from the trip until I did this series so that it could be like I was reliving the adventure, but because of that, I completely forgot that I never wrote the last four days of our trip. If I had realized sooner, I would have written what I remembered soon after, but now that it has been 6 months since then, I hardly remember anything. I will try to piece together a little of what we did, but it clearly won’t be the same as if I were writing it the night it happened.
This day started early. We wanted to see the sunrise over the grand canyon, so we got up early enough to see the sunrise at one of the lookouts and then we spent probably another two to three hours going to different lookout points and seeing the canyon. One thing I remember is thinking how insane it would have been to be the first ones to explore the canyon.
I don’t remember the exact history, but I remember reading on one of the info signs that it talked about the first people exploring the canyon (by boat on the river below) thought that the canyon was just going to keep getting bigger and higher. Some of the men abandoned ship and tried to climb out of the canyon before it got bigger. If I recall correctly, these men were never heard from again. History is so incredible yet so often we disregard it.
Even though we had planned to hike the canyon but weren’t able to due to injuries, it was still a very peaceful time being able to see this massive wonder in the beauty of the sunrise. Someday, I want to go back and hike it, but I’m at least glad we got to see it.
We had about an 8-hour drive from the Grand Canyon to the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado — where we were camping that night — so we were fighting time a little bit. We wanted so badly to be able to have longer at both places, but eventually, we had to head out from the canyon and pile in the car.
We got to the sand dunes right around sunset if I remember correctly, but we wanted to get our campsite set up before dark and we also thought that by the time we got on the dunes anyway it would be dark, so we might as well wait until it was.
The sand dunes are known for having incredible stars, and somehow we were able to plan our stay there both during a meteor shower and one day after the new moon, so the stars were insane! Maybe the most I’ve ever seen.
We had a blast. I splurged a bit and rented an overpriced sled that we took up on the dunes. And that along with a frisbee kept us entertained for quite a while up on top. It was weird just hiking wherever you want with no trails, but it was really cool as well. The stars were so bright that we were able to toss the disc around some — even playing jackpot when we found a spot we liked — and we did that until we all wanted to just lay down and look at the stars.
We laid there for over an hour, huddled together, just looking at the beauty of God’s creation. We might have stayed there all night, but eventually, we got cold enough that we wanted to get to our sleeping bags and our tents.
I have no clue what time we got back, but probably after 3:00. Hence why I didn’t write anything the night it actually happened.
Too bad you didn’t write anything these last days. It would have been very interesting to know what your thoughts really were, and compare them to now-six months later.
Thanks for sharing your adventures on your trip. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope you get to experience it again, but not as fast paced.
Enjoy each day!
Aghh! This is almost as bad as reading a book and not finding out the last chapter never got written until you go to read the ending…and it’s not there! = ) However, your remembrances were equally enjoyable to the daily journals, so thanks for writing what you could recall.