Travelogue

Coral Pink Sand DunesThe southern area of Utah that we were going to concentrate on this trip is about 13 hours from our home, so we had to break the drive up into 2 days, staying the first night in Barstow, California, and then continuing on to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, a place we had never been to before.

Rather than the remote sand dunes of Death Valley that we love to climb and photograph, these dunes are an OHV area, where dune buggies had free rein on 90% of them, so we knew it wasn’t going to be the solitary, serene experience we were used to.

Coral Pink Sand DunesStill the dunes were quite beautiful and unique in that they are actually quite pink, unlike the usual beige we were used to. It seems like everything in Utah has a reddish tint.

So why is the sand here so pink? It comes from the iron oxides and other minerals present in the surrounding Navajo Sandstone. As the sandstone erodes, iron-stained sand grains are released.

These pinkish-red grains of sand are then picked up and blown by strong winds, which get funneled through a notch in the nearby Moquith and Moccasin Mountains.

Conquering the dunes on footThe wind velocity decreases when it reaches the open valley area of the park, dropping the grains down on the valley where over the last 10,000 to 15,000 years, they have formed the large dunes we see here today. This process is called the Venturi effect.

Playing in the DunesThe dunes are still moving and shifting as much as 50 feet per year.

The highest dunes are only about 40 to 50 feet though, unlike the massive Eureka Dunes we usually go to, which are 680 feet high.

I seriously doubt that OHV vehicles could conquer that steepness, but they definitely were much easier to conquer by foot.

Ponderosa Grove CampgroundSince we were not allowed to drive our 4Runner in the OHV area, we drove to the BLM land just north of the State Park, where there were dunes we could drive on.

The sand here was much deeper than any other dune driving we had done before, so even after letting out more air, we still couldn’t make it up the steep hill we were trying to conquer. Instead, we slowly backed down, and got out of the truck and hiked up the dunes.

After unsuccessfully looking for a place to disperse camp, as you can on BLM land, we drove the short distance back to the Ponderosa Grove Campground, a lovely BLM campground set amid rolling sagebrush and ponderosa pines.

It was actually quite lovely and each campsite had quite a bit of privacy. Herb even made Pad Thai for dinner!