In the morning, we did homeschooling as usual.  Here our son is working on Talmud skills:

In the late morning, we walked out to the Kelso Dunes, the third highest sand dunes in the US:

We have a long way to go:

Here’s a clue that it’s windy here sometimes:

It rained in the morning, and it left little craters in the sand:

After a surprisingly difficult climb, we managed to get up on to the ridge of the highest dune:

A look back towards the RV shows just how lonely it is out here.  Our RV is in the center left of the frame.  Below is a zoomed in section of the photograph:

From the peak, more dunes can be seen to the west:

The kids ran down the dune.  We might have ran down after them:

We later photographed them jumping into the sand:

We found plenty of animal tracks, including those of a roadrunner:

The RV in the distance:

We found a single cholla cactus:

The ant hills around here are ringed by plant fragments.  I suppose the ants carry the plants in and pick out the seeds and throw out the rest:

After we had lunch, we drove north towards the ghost town of Kelso, where the train depot has been converted into the visitor center.  We spotted a tarantula crossing the road, and stopped for a photograph.  Here he is balled up in a depression hoping we will go away.  When he was on the move, he was quite a bit bigger:

When we arrived in Kelso, we discovered that the depot is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  We continued North to our dispersed camping location near Sunrise Rock, which has an interesting history.

  See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.