Blog

In the morning we headed to White Sands National Monument, about 30 minutes away. The Visitor’s Center was constructed in a pretty southwestern adobe style, officially known as “Pueblo Revival.”

Strangely there was no camping anywhere near the Monument. This is probably because the Military closes down the park for a few hours every time they do missile testing, about 2x a week. It was 2 hours north of here where the first nuclear bombs were tested in 1945, prior to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, at a place called the Trinity Site. I curiously checked on-line to find out if we were in any danger of radiation exposure. I was relieved to find out that the Trinity site had radiation levels only about 10 times normal, and fortunately we were 2 hours away from it.

It was quite cold and we drove through a bitterly cold fog that frosted all the desert plants on the way to the park. At the park we purchased used snow discs so the boys could sled down the white sand dunes. The dunes are made from gypsum.

The dunes were remarkably similar to snow, even the sparkling crystals in the sun looked like snow.  It packed down like snow, but it was a lot heavier and harder on the tailbone, as Ian found out. The weirdest thing was that the pictures looked exactly like we were in Tahoe!

Even the roads were plowed like snow, and in the distance were snow capped mountains!

The boys had to force themselves to close their eyes and mouth when sledding to avoid inhaling sand. 

The sand was strangely sticky. Gypsum is water soluble, so it starts to dissolve when it gets wet. I’m not sure how the dunes remain so loose and fluffy.

When it rains the sand dissolves, but apparently it doesn’t rain much. The dew made either the ice or selenite crystals on the surface of the dunes sparkle. I attempted to capture it on my camera.

I ended up with several spots on my CCD image sensor after these shots. I’m hoping I will be able to clean it later.

It began to get crowded as many tour buses deposited many Asian people. Next time we come here I will make a bigger effort to arrive as early as possible in order to catch the morning light on the fresh dunes before they have been trampled or wind blown.

Once the sun hit the dunes fully, the sparkle melted and the dunes looked more like white sand

We were cleaning up after a meal in the Earthroamer, getting ready to depart, when a couple came by and started talking with the boys about the truck. They said they lived an hour from the Earthroamer headquarters in Colorado, but had never seen one up close. They loved to explore in their RV and told us about some of their exploits while also inquiring about the Earthroamer. Jason noticed the man was wearing an Air Force hat and asked if he had been in the Air Force. Turns out he was a retired fighter pilot. We mentioned that we had been to the Pima Air and Space Museum 2 days ago, and had been so impressed with the SR-71. We were astounded when the man said he had flown the SR-71! What are the chances of that, considering there were only 80-100 people ever certified to pilot it? He told us some very interesting stories about how they had to prepare to set the record between New York and London, in order to beat the Concorde. We could have chatted with him for hours. His name was George Sewell.

In the afternoon we drove east over the Guadalupe Mountains to Artesia, a small petroleum based town, and then south to Carlsbad. We arrived after dark and decided to stay at the Carlsbad RV park about 25 minutes north of the caverns. Once again there were few options near the park.