Utah's Remote Coral Pink Sand Dunes in Wintertime

High on the strange dunes, my two sons were playing barefoot in the icy, but exquisite pinkish sands....If this winter scene doesn't speak to you of wonderful silence and the pleasure of having an entire State Park all to yourself, then you're probably one of the people who ought to stay home!

The still life below I have named "Mars on Earth." There is the fragile winter snow caught and preserved by a insulating blanket of blown sand. One suspects that this same process is found in the polar caps and polar regions of Mars, but there involves not just water ice, but also dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide). .

The Coral Pink dunes are found far to the south of Utah's major population centers. They lie 6,000 ft. high, just a few miles north of the Arizona border in a remote section of south-central Utah close to Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona.... The "Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park" that contains the dunes is relatively small, but is open year-round, and was well-equipped and well-kept when we were there in mid-January. A special pleasure was the excellent, modern restroom with heat and hot showers! The color of the dunes lies in their kinship to Arizona's famous "Red Rock" country to the south. The Navaho sandstones have been eroded by the winds and blown northward through a notch, and to an settling-out point within the nestling arms of the nearby mountains.

Link to Utah State Parks website about this Park

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Last Revision 11/08/2007; reviewed 11/26/2021