Dunes Among Diversity

Open 24/7 year-round! There are no limitations, timed entries, or reservations to visit.

The tallest dunes in North America are the centerpiece in a diverse landscape of grasslands, wetlands, forests, alpine lakes, and tundra. Stay on a moonless night to experience countless stars in this International Dark Sky Park!

20 May 2023

While not exactly a Chamber of Commerce Day we did made the best of it by first stopping at the temporary Visitors Center. We missed the reopening of the remodeled Visitor Center by a couple weeks, so this will put this Park on the revisit list. After we took care of what we could at the Visitor Center we headed out to the dunes. Your first challenge to get to the Dunes is to cross Medano creek. In late Summer this is a dry creek bed but in late Spring it is a wide flowing creek 6 to 8 inch's deep so be prepared for wet feet. Daisy had no issues and made the creek her personnel playground. After crossing the creek, we headed up to the first small dune. We would have gone further but the 50-degree day with lite rain and wind changed our minds. We headed back to the creek to face the return trip across. This was an amazing park to take in and we spent 3 hours here. You can spend all day here if the weather is nice and you want to hike up to the tops of the dunes. Daisy completed another Bark Ranger badge. This Park is very dog friendly but be mindful that during the Summer the sand temps may be too hot for the dogs unless you have hiking botties for your dog.

Click here for photos of our visit

NPS Website

Our 164th NPS Unit and 22nd National Park