Friday morning I got up early for a quail-watching walk and found a couple new wildflowers in the scrub behind the campground.
Then we packed a lunch and headed to White Sands National Park!
It’s the largest gypsum dune field on Earth, formed over thousands of years after an Ice Age sea evaporated, leaving gypsum that broke down into selenium crystals.
Gypsum stays relatively cool even in high temps. If you dig your toes in a little, it can actually feel chilly.
It can also retain water better than most types of sand, so there are spots where the deeper layers that have absorbed water are exposed that are as hard as concrete.
We brought sleds that the campground very graciously made available for guests. The top layer of sand was super soft so it was tough to get much speed. Or maybe it’s our technique?
(Dad did pretty well, though)
Might be the technique.
After several slides down and climbs up, we were pooped!
We took a a break at the covered picnic tables for lunch.
Halves flipped, our liverwurst and Swiss sandwiches looked like hearts. Thanks, Mom! <3
We returned to the dunes to attempt a bit of the “Alkaline Flat” trail, which is NOT flat and is something like 5 miles of 100% dunes. We made it about 10 minutes before we realized we needed to give up our Lawrence-of-Arabia dreams — deserts be hot.
I got up to one of the higher dunes to get this 360 view before turning back.
Also, the lizards here are pure white!! They moved way too fast for me to get a photo.
Also also we saw this beautiful blossoming cactus on the road out of the park.
On our return to the campground, we made a pit stop at the other large pistachio farm in Alamogordo, Heart of the Desert. It’s a lot less touristy and has a beautiful patio overlooking the groves. They also have a winery. I got a delicious glass of Cabernet & Mom & Dad shared some delicious pistachio ice cream made with the nuts from Heart of the Desert’s crop.
At this point Dad looked like his soul had left his body so we split back to the campground for a nice long nap.
We were going to try to cram in a trip to Three Rivers Petroglyphs Site before sundown, but Mother Nature took pity on us and sent a little dust & rain storm to keep us inside, which realistically, we probably needed. We borrowed Happy Gilmore from the campground library and chilled for their rest of the night.
Next — Petroglyphs & (So Many) Pets!
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