We were super excited when we talked with Lauren and Matt about their engagement photos and they asked if we’d be willing to come down to Great Sand Dunes National Park for the session. Obviously, living at the top of the Rocky Mountains is about as picturesque as it gets, but that doesn’t mean we don’t absolutely love getting to explore and shoot in new places. For as close as it is, and as much as we love hiking in the National Parks, we’d never actually been to Great Sand Dunes National Park!

We started the afternoon picking Matt and Lauren up at the visitor center and heading out the “primitive” road to assess the park. We bumped down the sandy road for a couple miles before finding an awesome valley that gave us a view of the dunes, the mountains, and the changing leaves. Matt unpacked his guitar and serenaded Lauren a bit, then we convinced them to tromp through some prickly, but pretty brush. We all enjoyed a quick picnic provided by Lauren while we made plans for how to tackle the 800 foot high sand dunes.

Matt and Lauren were total troopers as we raced up dune after dune promising we just wanted to get “a little bit” higher before the sunset. Even though we all agreed we were stopping at the top of the first dune, we ended up racing to the very highest dune in the park, which is a lot harder than it seems when the ground is literally crumbling under your feet! Luckily the view from the top of the dunes was absolutely stunning! We had a gorgeous sunset and Lauren and Matt totally killed it with the pictures- we’re pretty sure they practiced their poses at home! The full moon came up just in time to light our hike down the dunes just enough that none of us barrel-rolled back down.

Lauren told us she and Matt skipped their workout in favor of an active rest day… it was certainly one of the two! We had a great time hiking the dunes for their engagement session, and we are positive we are all going to have an amazing time at the wedding in Garden of the Gods next summer!