August 25, 2016

Market Hall in Rotterdam, Netherlands

What a long, magnificent trip it’s been! We started our summer road trip in the oldest of our national parks, Yellowstone, and now we’re ending it in one of the newest: Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, established in 2004. It’s the national park that most of you voted for in our poll to decide where to end our road trip, and it’s a fitting place to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service, which was founded on this day in 1916. Congratulations, NPS, and here’s to the next 100 years!

But first, let’s consider our present surroundings. The 750-foot (and higher) sand dunes here are an awe-inspiring and unexpected feature of Colorado’s topography. And yet the towering hills of sand are just one feature of a patchwork landscape that also includes conifer forests, alpine lakes, and wetlands. The 85,000-acre park and preserve even encompasses stretches of tundra at the higher elevations, where it edges up against the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It’s a magnificent setting for the final leg of our road trip as we consider the bittersweet reality that all things—even national parks road trips—come to an end. For now.