The sand dunes

We went on our first camping trip together to the sand dunes, a couple hours southwest of here. I decided not to bring my camera (since we were going to be surrounded by sand). Matt was okay bringing his though. "It's old," he said. But when we tried to use it, the battery was dead. Alas.

I was surprised that there were indeed real, legitimate sand dunes so close. You know, the ones that look like this (thanks to David Gilbert Photography). They went on and on quite a ways and then stopped just like this one at the edge of a mountain. Some of the dunes butted right up next to open fields with shrubbery. Why the shrubs stay on one side and the sand pretty much stays on the other, I don't know. But I'd like to find out.

We mosied around the dunes after dinner and watched the sunset. We also brought one of our little fabric frisbees and played with that. We returned at night to see the stars and then we went in one more time in the morning before we left. It was really fun to jump off the top of the dunes and see how far we slid down. The sand was so soft, powdery almost, like the sand at Clearwater Beach. And it was fun to play in. I told Matt we ought to have brought snowboards and he said something about Kimmy, I can't quite remember exactly what. :) But she would probably love to try that. Maybe someday she will.

When we woke up in the morning we saw a couple of foxes outside of our tent. They hung around for a few seconds and then went on their way. Later, while we were taking the tent down and packing up, they came back. One got about 10 feet away from us, just looking and smelling the ground. I think he's used to being fed by campers, poor thing. Still though, he was quite a sight to see.

I loved making camp fires; I loved my foil dinner; I loved making my smore (especially since Matt brought a symphony bar instead of plain Hershey's chocolate); and I particularly loved waking up to the sunrise (when its cool outside and everything else is waking up too, or so it sounds). The only part I didn't like was when it got late at night. I don't really like being outside in the dark, unable to see who or what's around combined with being in someplace that I'm not familiar with. Any advice? All in all, it was a great trip.