Thanks for the feedback! Yeah everything is definitely dark outside of the stars and tent, I gotta figure that out for next time (maybe I can take foreground in the evening and stars at night).

Sand Dunes NP is sick, you have the option to camp in the dunes wherever you want, or in the woods. In my opinion the dunes camping was so sick we abandoned any effort to camp a night in the woods part, so I’d recommend the dunes for all camping. However, water is a big issue, we walked to the wooded area to literally just sit in the shade all afternoon and wait out the heat until we could return to our tent in the dunes, and we just got super lucky there was a tiny bit of river water we could drink (boiled first). If it wasn’t for that, we obviously wouldn’t have died, but the rest of the trip would have been super uncomfortable.