White Sands

Thursday, Feb 9…

“Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders - the glistening white sands of New Mexico. Great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert, creating the world's largest gypsum dune field.” (NPS data)

White Sands National Monument preserves a major chunk of these dunes so that folks like us can enjoy them. Gypsum sand doesn’t heat up like regular sand and, b/c it’s a mixture of tiny granules and powder, it’s also more compact (as in “solid”) and therefore much easier to walk on. In fact, you can even sled on it! The area is subject to high winds, so the dunes are constantly changing shape and moving.  It’s a pretty cool place!

Entering the dunes.

Anyone seen the snowplow?

...just a tiny corner of those 275 acres

Always shifting

(not mine, but what detail)

I'm East Coast born - isn't that
the Atlantic on the horizon?

In the afternoon we visited the NM Museum of Space history, wandering through various displays of space-related memorabilia, and eventually watching Journey to Space on a domed Imax screen. As is often the case, I was in absolute awe of what the human mind can conceive/create (Intl Space Station, for example), and the intelligence and courage it takes to be an astronaut.  Mind boggling.

I don't seem to be able to add captions without these pics jumping all over. Obviously we're at the space museum above. The sunset is shot from the Elks parking lot in Alamogordo, where we're

camped. The John Muir quote was posted at White Sands, and I just really liked it.