GREAT SAND DUNES NATIONAL PARK, Colo. — The bearded dude with the acoustic guitar led a full-throated rendition of “She’ll be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and it seemed his tipsy, tin-eared group intended to serenade the rest of the campground all night.

I’m pretty sure drunken amateur folksongs are the house music in Hell, but on this night we had a way out of the campground, and into one of the most special campsites in the National Park system.

If only the weather would allow it.

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My wife, Jennifer, and I had obtained a permit from a park ranger to pitch our tent pretty much wherever we wanted in the 30 square miles of massive sand dunes that give this bizarre park its name.

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The problem was that a band of evening thunderstorms was sliding across southern Colorado in our direction. (The park is about a four-hour drive from Denver.) When we got our permit, the ranger warned us of the weather danger and insisted on showing us a chunk of “petrified lightning” — sand that had been struck by a bolt hotter than the surface of the sun, and fused into one piece. She did a good job deterring us from taking any chances in an electrical storm.

We had already hiked miles into the dune field earlier that day, which was extremely taxing but well worth it. You can read in a guidebook that the park’s dunes reach 750 feet high, but their overwhelming scale is hard to appreciate until you are looking up at them. We saw few people hiking beyond the first high ridge of dunes, so in venturing deeper we felt like we had the place to ourselves. It’s a great photography park: There are dunes in the foreground, mountains in the back, and lots of unusual shapes and shadows.

The wind constantly reshapes the dunes, so climb wherever you want — your footprints will soon be erased. In certain windy high spots, anyone who just applied a thick layer of fresh sunscreen will end up plastered with fine sand, looking like a cinnamon powdered doughnut. You can slide down the dunes on a sled; the variety store just outside the park entrance rents the special sleds. (It also has great pies.)

The hour-by-hour forecast suggested the thunderstorms would pass by 10 p.m. By 9, the sky was half-clear and stars were showing, so we struck our tent in the campground, left the noisy neighbors behind, and headed for the dunes as fast as we could.

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This involved bouncing our rented Japanese compact car a mile along a rough unpaved road, which is one reason I would never buy a used car from a rental agency.

From the parking area to the dunes was about a half-mile hike through low brush. There is no light pollution in the park, and with the moon behind clouds we could see only the 25 feet or so our tiny lights would illuminate in front of us. There are bears in the area, so we kept up a loud conversation to let them know we were coming. When I ran out of things to say, I just spoke into the darkness, “Hey bears! We love bears!”

The sandy trail faded out at a shallow brook, but where were the dunes? They should have been right here. Our moment of confusion would seem funny the next day, because the hulking dunes began just steps beyond the reach of our lights. It was like being unable to find the broadside of the Queen Mary from 30 paces.

Once we found the dunes we had another 20 to 30 minutes of hard hiking — kicking a step into the sand and sliding back half-a-step — to get over the first high ridges to camp legally. This was brutal, like climbing the world’s steepest beach. We would see the next day that in the darkness we had blundered along the steepest possible route. It would certainly be easier to get to your campsite before the sun goes down.

Finally over the ridge, we wandered into a shallow bowl between dunes and found a nice flat spot to set up.

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The night was windless. Tucked into our sleeping bags, we were cocooned inside a massive silence, disturbed only by the occasional light wrinkling of tent fabric.

Tucked into our sleeping bags, we were cocooned inside a massive silence, disturbed only by the occasional light wrinkling of tent fabric.

Bright light woke me a few hours later. I crawled out of the tent and into a night nearly as brilliant as the day. The clouds had cleared and the dunes glowed with moonlight, as if they were lighted from below.

In the chilly night, I stood in awe at the greatest campsite ever, and laughed.

Mark Arsenault can be reached at mark.arsenault@globe.com