We woke up Friday morning and departed Garner State Park in a timely fashion taking only an hour to pack up camp. It was Archer’s 6th birthday and we had a 4.5 hour drive, according to GPS, till we reached what appeared to be a Sahara Desert knock off. SIX hours later of driving through some of the crappiest scenery Texas has to offer (I didn’t think that was possible), we arrived at the sandhills of Monahans. And the pictures didn’t lie. Similar to Lost Maples, the dunes of this 3,000+ acre sand deposit appear out of place in the flat, rocky cactus covered landscape that surround them. Here’s an aerial photo I found on Wikipedia.

The park entrance is right off 1-20 across some train tracks and as soon as you enter the gate, you can tell the park was built in the 50’s. 😀 The most Mid Century Modern architecture I’ve seen in a state park to date.

With our rented “sand discs” aka snow toboggans acquired at check in, we started down the mile and a half park road to the camping area. Initially all we were seeing were short sandhills covered in vegetation and the kids were pissed. “How are we supposed to slide on this, Mommy?!” We’ll get stuck by cactus!” “These are small and don’t look like the pictures.” Then, Bam! We rounded a corner and were suddenly in Egypt!

Our campsite was literally an asphalt pad in sand. It was 2:30 and knowing we would be short on daylight, Ashlyn and I busted out another 30 minute pop up while the boys scampered over a nearby hill dying to explore. When I went to fetch them, they were already fully immersed.

For our initial adventure, we left Sally in the camper. I wasn’t sure what was going on over in the dunes or if dogs were even allowed on them. We soon learned that only motor vehicles are restricted and it was basically a free for all. Pick a dune and take a ride! We found ourselves venturing farther back climbing higher and higher until we were convinced we had found the tallest dune there. And no one was out there! The camp sites were plenty full, but no one was playing. The weather was holding a tolerable upper 60s with a little chill in the wind, but the cloudless sky made for a nice balance of heat from the sun. I decided to let the kids stay on our claimed sand mountain and 10 minutes later, being able to view them the entire time, I returned with Sally and they had built 3 sand castles. 😆

We spent the rest of the evening on our mound. Sally ran around like a wild child, the kids went back and forth between sliding down the hill or just tumbling, and I sat enjoying the scenery after one awesome ride down myself. It got exhausting quick trudging through the sand!

About the time we started to take in the sunset, a sudden chill hit and sent us running for the warmth of the camper! Desert life!

We enjoyed hot showers in probably one of the nicest bath houses I’ve seen in a state park and hoped we got all the sand out of the boys’ pores. I cooked birthday boy’s requested Frito Pie dinner on a camp table erected on our asphalt pad and we dined indoors as the temps hit the 40s. We had been very lucky the first 2 nights of this trip with mild temps at night. But knowing winter was going to catch up with us, I had electric heating blankets prepared in addition to our space heater. And instead of sleeping under them, we would be sleeping on them in our slide out beds. I had recently read a blog post from folks that FULL TIME pop up camp (wow) and they had made the suggestion for how deal with your bed being suspended in frigid air. And it worked wonderfully! It got down to 34 degrees that first night and we had a frost on the ceiling of our slide outs, but we were toasty warm! It was just difficult getting up lol! Fortunately the sun came up in another cloudless sky and dried everything up for us to pack up and be on our way by noon. This time we only had a 2 and a half hour drive to our next park, San Angelo State Park.

The kids were dying for another day of play at this park. While our one night there was a noisy one due to the nearby interstate and surrounding mining and oil industry, we could’ve easily handled another night there. I’ve promised them return visits anytime we’re passing by. Apparently the surrounding geology keeps the Sandhills from migrating, but the dunes are ever changing with the seasonal winds and you won’t experince the same park twice. This place was bucket list level for us and I’m so glad we got to experince such a Texas style winter activity.

-Lindsay