We stayed four nights at the San Luis Lake Campground, which was about 25 minutes from the Sand Dunes and had a bit of a weird vibe, feeling abandoned. Evidently, it used to be a state park and later became a wildlife area. We had to have a fishing/hunting license in order to stay there, instead of needing a state park pass, but the lake was all dried up so no fishing was possible. I was surprised that wasn’t mentioned on the website or in reviews, so maybe it dried up recently. The major road construction going on near the campground entrance was a little inconvenient, but it was still a nice place to stay. It was super quiet and had amazing sunsets and views of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range and the Sand Dunes; plus we had electrical hookups and a good internet connection!
The worst part about this campground is that it had mice! (or at least one mouse, which found its way into our RV!) It surprised Randy when he picked up his backpack the first morning. We were able to shoo it out the door pretty easily; it seemed slower than most mice. We didn’t see any droppings anywhere and couldn’t figure out how it got in. Randy sprayed some peppermint oil repellant around the rig to try to deter it from coming back, but then, of course, it started raining about 15 minutes later. In any case, we didn’t see it again and hopefully won’t see more in the future!
The next day, we drove to the Zapata Falls trailhead and hiked about half a mile up to the falls. We waded through the (very cold, but shallow) river a short ways to get back into a cavernous area, where we could see the falls. The entire area was pretty, so I’m glad we decided to go see it. We lucked out with the weather, since it was cloudy and thundering, but only sprinkled a tiny bit.
From the falls, we drove to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. I was pleasantly surprised there was still so much water running at the bottom of the dunes. We waded through that, then hiked up one of the dunes. It was entertaining to watch people sled and board down. We walked along a ridge, then decided to go down into a valley for a while when it got super windy. It was a challenge to walk back up, since I slid down a little ways each step I took, but I eventually made it back to the top. I was out of breath, but I made it.
On our last day in the area, we drove to Alamosa, ate lunch at the Purple Pig Pizzeria and walked around town. There were electric scooters laying around, so we also tried those out. They were fun while they lasted, but two of the four we tried had low batteries and died before getting very far. Oh well, probably better to get more exercise by walking, anyway. We got a few groceries and filled up with diesel before heading back to the campground for our last night there.
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