We left the town of Carlsbad after seeing Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe Mountains. We crossed the west Texas desert (descending a few thousand feet in a fairly short time), drove west to El Paso and then north, back into New Mexico to stay at Las Cruses (The Crosses). This is a scenic town (home of New Mexico State University) of about 100,000 people. It's the second largest city in New Mexico, which tells you something about the population of the state!
We drove about an hour to White Sands National Monument. On the way we saw the first snow during our trip.
The Monument is next to White Sands Missile Test Site and sometimes the road is closed because of missile testing! Fortunately, we were able to get through.
White sands is a unique desert environment made up of gypsum sand, the stuff that goes into drywall. This is different from normal beach sand; it's white and much finer. It is created by rainwater and snow in the mountains (see above) melting the gypsum there and running down into the valley. But there is no exit in the valley and the water accumulates in shallow lakes until it evaporates, leaving the gypsum, which wind blows into these dunes. These are the largest gypsum dunes in the world and they produce a special kind of environment for plants and animals.
We learned a lot and Matthew got another Junior Ranger badge.
In additional to the educational opportunities, it turns out that there are other things to do there, like playing in the sand! We purchased some disks and went sledding down the dunes!
After our sledding we went further into the heart of the dunes, where there was less and less vegetation. The sand is hard and pretty easy to walk on. We soon encountered an eerie landscape that looked to us like the Sahara desert (well, with mountains in the background...)
Because the wind blows so much, the park service has to plow the path, similar to clearing snow off the road in the north!
It may look like snow, but it's really white sand, and we don't miss the snow!
Bill and fam,
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are having a good time and seeing amazing things! I got caught up on your posts tonight and noticed a big Tabasco bottle in one of them. Have you ever used www.roadsideamerica.com ? It would be great for your trip and help you find unique and interesting things to see along the way. Be safe (glad you did not go into Mexico) and have fun.
m
Interesting places - the dunes look like fun. There is a lot of history in the White Sands area. The US government utilized WS for WW2 development of the Redstone Missles that launched Alan Shepard into space. Werner von Braun and Robert Oppenheimer spent time in WS. Braun become a major force in the space program. I read a book on Oppenheimer and he was a physics genius but he also tried to kill one of his professors in grad school. The 1st atomic bomb was detonated at Trinity Site. Have fun! Tom
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