In the fall of 2020, my wife and I had planned to visit New Mexico to see the national parks and other scenic areas, plus attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. That fell apart with Covid. Since I retired, we have been taking about a month in the spring to drive out west from Michigan. In 2022 we made it to New Mexico for a couple weeks, but that did not cover the balloons. We returned in late September to go to the Fiesta with her sisters.
Having gone that far, I did not want to just come back home right away. It seemed a good idea to me that we stay on for another week and a half to visit the San Juan Mountains in southwestern Colorado. We had visited Colorado in 2015, including a day at Great Sand Dunes National Park. I like to shoot landscape photos when we travel, but I had been disappointed at the Dunes in 2015 because it had rained the night before and spoiled the ripples in the sand that look so good in a photo. Once again, if we were going to be as close as the San Juan Mountains, I wanted to go back to Great Sand Dunes.
We arrived at a nearby lodge toward the end of our trip. I got up early the next morning to go out and photograph the dunes. It takes some time to get out into the dune field and away from the area where people have been walking and disturbing the sand.
Eventually, I made my way out into the undisturbed dunes and started to photograph. The sun angle was low and highlighted the ripples in the sand nicely. This was one of my favorite shots from that morning.
