But first, the sand dunes. They are indeed comprised of coral pink sand:
There are some interesting facts about these dunes, besides being coral pink. The first is that there are several species unique to this little corner of the world, an area of just a couple of thousand acres. One is the colorful Coral Pink Sand Dune tiger beetle, another is a unique species of yucca, the Kanab yucca.
The second is how these dunes were created. To put it simply: thousands of years ago, there was a small sea here, the Dixie Sea. The sea eventually evaporated, and sand turned coral pink by iron oxides was compressed into coral pink sandstone. Then erosion, through wind, rain, snow and ice, started grinding the cliffs of sandstone back into sand. Not quite as simple as one would think!! It seems like a round-about way to create coral pink sand, and it requires many thousands of years.
From cliffs:
To sand:
I mentioned a happily serendipitous happening while we were here. As we were driving towards the park, we came across an anachronistic wagon train!
They were preparing for something, but we were not sure what. As we were leaving the park, we found them farther down the road, creating a wagon train circle in a larger dirt parking lot:
Fun stuff! Of course, the path of this wagon train was a paved road, making the travel far easier than it was 150 years ago. There was also a large truck of hay already parked at the large parking lot for these well-fed horses!
Now we understood all the horse trailers parked just off the freeway at the Coral Pink Sand Dunes Park turn-off:
And the mysterious wagon! Perhaps this one was an extra, brought along "just in case".
