6 parks left, 5, 4,...

On Tuesday afternoon, we arrived at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado.  This is one of the smaller and less popular parks so we were able to get a campsite within the park.  For me, the lack of people made it a lot more enjoyable.  During the remaining daylight hours, we drove along the south rim of the canyon and stopped at several lookouts and the visitors center.  There was a McDonalds in the nearby town that had only one arch.

In the morning, we looked around some more and left for the Great Sand Dunes, also in Colorado.  The dunes are massive, probably 2 or 3 times as big as at Silver Lake.  The shop just outside the park rented sand sleds, so we tried them out.  I had a hard time keeping it straight and kept rolling over.  Also, sandles were a bad choice; the sand can get up to 150 degrees. After returning the sleds, we drove to the campground at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.

The Wind Cave got its name from a couple foot sized opening to the cave that can blow up to 45 mph when the air pressure inside the cave is different than the outside (when a storm is moving in for example).  We took the Natural Entrance Tour so we saw the hole and then walked down 300 steps through the cave.  There was an elevator at the end though, so that was convienent.  

After our tour, we drove to Badlands National Park, also in South Dakota.  The temperature was in the 90s so we only did two short hikes and stopped at several lookouts.

On the way out of the park, we stopped at Wall Drug (major tourist trap).  

The next park was Glacier.  We finally got tickets after getting up and having them sell out in 2-4 minutes.  On the way, we took detours to Crazy Horse and Devil's Tower.

We have a day of driving ahead of us on the way back west to Glacier, but it'll be worth it.