t 6:47 AM on November 12, 2025, golden light touches the crest of Star Dune while snow glows on Sangre de Cristo peaks 8 miles away. This is Great Sand Dunes National Park, where 750-foot sand mountains rise impossibly at the base of 13,000-foot Rocky Mountain summits.

“Otherworldly” is a word that’s thrown around to describe a number of places around the globe—from driftwood beaches and volcanic wonders to polar landscapes and rock formations with a stunning array of colors.

In some places, sand dunes protect shorelines from the onslaught of ocean waves. In other places, the dunes themselves are on the move, and threaten human structures.

Spending time in Wyoming’s vast Killpecker Sand Dunes deserves a spot on anyone’s bucket list. It feels like visiting another planet — a place where the sand sings to you.

The desert gets a pretty unfair rap. Hollywood may want us to believe every desert is a barren expanse of cactus-pocked flatland, or perhaps an endless sea of shifting yellow sand, but there’s much more to this fascinating biome than we’ve been taught to expect. Case in point: New Mexico’s one-of-a-kind White Sands National Park.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is inviting all motorists to use the state’s trails, scramble areas, county, state forest and national forest roads during Free ORV weekend Aug. 16-17.