4.27.2021 Same site

In the morning, we tried the outdoor pool - hot as bathwater. We met an old man whose family he said had been in the area since the 1700s. He explained the different plots of land - which soil was good for growing potatoes, lettuce, and cattle, and which parts were adobe and incapable of growing anything. He told us about the Spanish who used to look down on them because they used sixteenth century spanish - that was how isolated the area was. Apparently, the sandy landscape used to be swamp, before irrigation became sprinklers, and the water seeped into the ground when farming. He joked that he used to walk 10 miles to school “uphill both ways.”

When we arrived at the sand dunes campground, another little building in the middle of the desert-like grassland, the weather turned sour and started hailing. The pieces were half an inch around, bouncing around the ground and covering the dirt with small white balls. The weather turned again, and we rented boards to sled on the sand.

The sand dunes seem out of a movie - my dad kept comparing them to Aladin. They rose in hills out of the ground. We walked, shoes sinking into the sand at every step, the sand creating another layer underneath my feet, pressing into my soles. My dad and I hiked up to a peak. The wind pulled the sand everywhere - into my hair, eyes, nostrils. I had to lean into the wind to avoid falling. On the way, I found a bag of dog poop and threw it ahead of me to try to carry it down. It broke open. Since my dad said it was compostable, we left it in the sand to be buried. I did carry down a black slide shoe, nearly buried in the sand, and a small piece of plastic