The Imperial Sand Dunes
Sometimes the best trips are the ones you don’t plan. In the middle of a random week, three friends and I decided, on a whim, to go sandboarding at the Imperial Sand Dunes. No itinerary, just pure impulsiveness. We each packed a small backpack with clothes, grabbed whatever boards we had (snowboards, skim boards, boogie boards), and of course, a massive bottle of champagne. The night before, we booked the cheapest available Airbnb, got about three hours of sleep, and then hit the road at 2 AM for the four hour drive to the dunes.
There was literally no one else on the road, and as two of ours friends slept in the back, I stayed up to keep my friend driving some company. As 6 AM crept up, the first hint of light revealed the towering dunes, with some reaching up to 300 feet. That was when everything really hit us because we had spent the hours before not really thinking, just going for it, and now we were all insanely excited. We wasted no time grabbing our boards and sprinting toward the dunes, and as soon as the sky began turning different colors, we knew it was go-time. We raced each other down the dunes, speeding so fast we could barely stay balanced, and the adrenaline was so unreal until we realized something no one ever talks about: climbing back up is absolute torture.
Army crawling up massive dunes was exhausting. One of my fittest friends, who loves workouts, said it was the most cardio she’s ever done. Halfway up, another friend just gave up, rolled back down, and laid there in defeat which was hilarious. However, even though it was brutal to climb up, we kept going and doing reps on reps of racing down, trying tricks, wiping out, and laughing the whole time.
In between, we made sand angels, did sunrise yoga on our boogie boards, and just took in the changing sky. Watching the colors shift and then blend into the blue of the day. Then, once the sun was fully up, so was the heat. The desert can get brutally hot, and staying at the dunes all day wasn’t an option. So, we packed up and hit the road, bouncing from one spontaneous stop to the next—Joshua Tree, Palm Springs, and even a quick detour into Arizona just because we could. By the time we got back to our Airbnb, exhaustion hit us like a truck. We crashed hard for a bit, but by midnight, we were back up, and this time on the deck. We soaked up in a the hot tub, ordered way too much pizza, and toasted something we almost forgot we had. The champagne!
The next morning, we packed up one last time and drove funny enough, straight to the beach. That’s the beauty of Southern California, the terrain shifts so quickly, from desert dunes to coastal towns in just a few hours. There, we took the same boogie boards we had just been sandboarding on, and spent the entire day catching waves, completely stoked of how much we had done in just 48 hours.
This trip was a reminder of being young and free, being down with impulsive ideas, and not worrying about any schedules to abide by. This, in itself, is the power of just saying “Yes”!
