Love those sand dunes

One of the things my wife and I loved to do was walk in the sand dunes.

To do that you have to have special places where the sand bunches up.

Death Valley produced one such place, the mesquite dunes.

Death Valley to some is the last place they would ever go.  Gotta get off the freeway and you will see some special things.

We have been there quite a few times, staying at Pantamont Springs, a motel across the road from some beautiful dunes.

You have to remember one thing about Death Valley: it gets very hot there.

We challenged the dunes early in the morning while it was relatively cool, maybe just 75 or 80 degrees. In the heat of the day that might climb to 115 and sometimes more.

We enjoyed the early morning heat and the opportunity to climb the dunes, barefooted of course. The dunes are great early in the morning.

We also liked to go up the gullies that fed the valley when it rained, but don’t hold your breath because this rarely occurs.

We once stayed at Furnace Creek Resort’s motel but it caught on fire and drove us out.

We also enjoyed the dunes at Florence, Oregon. Located on the Oregon Coast.

Our son Nathan was getting his bachelor’s and then his master’s at the University of Oregon. When we went to see him we would take the Oregon Coast highway, staying at a central location so we could visit our favorite agate beach and then the sand dunes at Florence.

They sit right on the ocean and stretch for a good distance. We have walked the dunes there on a number of occasions.

With the ocean winds, the dunes continually were changing shape.

Perhaps our favorite dunes were at Bruneau, Idaho, some 50 miles southeast of Boise. We lived at Nampa then and would take the backroads to Buhl, where Dorothy’s family lived.

The Bruneau dunes were out in the middle of nowhere, and you seldom saw anyone else there.

By some quirk, the winds were just right and blew sand to this area. You could walk the dunes not having to worry about rattlesnakes buried in the sand. At least we didn’t worry at the time.

The wave of the dunes attracts one’s attention, and it is fun to walk barefoot in the sand.

We liked Bruneau because it was close, and we drove to Buhl where my wife went to school quite often.

Shake the shoes and enjoy the sand dunes.