Our first day in Kanab, UT, we took a drive out to the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park a few miles north. The drive to the park offers great scenery of the colorful bluffs along the way.
The park features coral-hued sand dunes located beside red sandstone cliffs. The Dunes are formed from the erosion of pink-colored Navajo Sandstone surrounding the park. High winds passing through the notch between the Moquith and Moccasin Mountains pick up loose sand particles and then drop them onto the dunes. The dunes are estimated to be between 10,000 and 15,000 years old. The park allows camping, hiking, and off-road vehicle driving, plus a pretty scenic picnic area. You can see ATV tracks all over the dunes closer to the road and up into the trees. The total grounds include 3,370 acres and it was established as a Utah state park in 1963.
I was rather disappointed in the dunes because they just weren’t very big. They look bigger on a postcard. They didn’t come close in comparison to the Kill Devil Hills dunes in NC, the Great Sand Dunes in CO, or even the White Sand Dunes in NM. The fee to enter the park was $8.00 and the viewing and access area to the dunes was very small. I was taking pictures into the sun the morning we were there so you can’t really tell the really deep pink color of the sand in the pictures I took.
I wanted to be sure I got my money’s worth, so I hiked down the hill and out towards the dunes. There were interesting animal tracks all over the place.
Even heading back towards the main highway offered some great scenery. I enjoyed that more than I did the dunes. At least we can say we have seen the pink dunes & don’t know why we didn’t visit the park on a couple of previous visits to the area in our travels.
We felt exactly the same way. Rather disappointed in the dunes. So it's a been there, done that kind of thing.
ReplyDelete