Follow the tour from start to finish: the welcome at the first stop, then for each stop the story you hear on the way there and what you see when you arrive.
Welcome to Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We'll walk the boardwalk out to the observation deck, then loop out onto the dunes on the sandy nature trail and back.
A few tips: the sand can get much hotter than the air, so keep shoes on, and bring water and sunglasses. Off-road vehicles ride on much of the dunes, so stay near the trail and listen for engines.
I'll tell you a story at each spot and stay quiet in between.
Here's a puzzle to think about as you walk: why is there a huge field of sand dunes right here, in the middle of forests and cliffs?
This is the only major dune field on the whole Colorado Plateau, and it's been piling up for about ten to fifteen thousand years. The park covers almost four thousand acres, and these days around three hundred thousand people a year come to see it.
The answer to the puzzle is waiting at the end of the boardwalk.
The boardwalk ends at the observation deck. Take a look across the dunes.
Here's the answer. Look for the two mountain ridges, the Moquith Mountains and the Moccasin Mountains, with a notch between them. When wind blows through that narrow gap, it speeds up, the same way water speeds up when you squeeze a garden hose. That fast wind can carry sand. Once it's through the gap and spreads out, it slows down, and it drops its sand right here.
And the sand has a story too. It comes from the Navajo Sandstone, the same rock as the cliffs of Zion and the walls you walked through this week, slowly crumbling back into sand. These dunes are ancient desert dunes, recycled.
The pink color comes from a thin coating of iron oxide, rust, on each grain of quartz.
Out on the sand now. Look at the ripples the wind has left.
These dunes are alive, in a way. They move. Wind pushes sand up the gentle side of a dune and it slides down the steep side, so the whole dune creeps forward. Here, dunes can travel as much as fifty feet in a year. Some of them stand more than fifty feet tall.
Look at the small ripples on the surface: each one is a tiny dune of its own, shaped by the last breeze. And look for tracks. Kangaroo rats come out at night, and their tiny hopping footprints are often all you'll see of them. Lizards, beetles and birds leave their marks too, until the wind wipes them away.
Keep an eye on the ground for tiny tracks and burrows.
The dunes are home to an animal that lives nowhere else on Earth: the Coral Pink Sand Dunes tiger beetle. It's only about half an inch long, white with a shiny bronze back. One scientist called it a beautiful little monster, because it's a fierce hunter of flies and other insects.
Its babies live in burrows in the low hollows between dunes for about a year, sometimes two, before they become adults. The adults are mostly out in spring, so you probably won't see one today, but they may be under your feet.
To protect them, part of the dunes is set aside as a conservation area where vehicles aren't allowed. Thanks to that agreement, the beetle wasn't added to the endangered species list.
You're near the far side of the loop.
Another rare resident lives here: Welsh's milkweed, a pale, silvery plant that grows only on moving sand dunes in this corner of Utah and Arizona. It was first described from plants found right here, and the largest group of them in the world grows in this park. It's listed as a threatened species, because tires and trampling can wipe it out.
Look at the other plants, too: rabbitbrush, sagebrush and yucca hold on at the edges, sending roots deep and wide to anchor themselves in sand that never stops moving. On a dune, just staying put is an accomplishment.
These dunes have been movie stars, too. In 1942, a Hollywood studio chose them to stand in for the deserts of the Middle East in a film called Arabian Nights, and Kanab asked the state to help build a road out here for the crews. Since then they've appeared in westerns and on television, from The Outlaw Josey Wales to Westworld.
This is the far side of the loop. The trail curves back to the deck from here. If you have a sled or board, find a good dune on the way and slide down. Thanks for walking the dunes with me.