White Sands National Monument

We left Pinetop, AZ on Saturday and drove to Alamogordo, NM for the night. What a change in the weather. In Pinetop it was maybe as warm as 70 degrees. In Alamogordo it was 80 when we arrived at 4 in the afternoon. We got up early today and drove to White Sands National Monument about 18 miles away.

It was cool and nice at 8:45 in the morning. There were plants that have adapted and survive in this sand.


And what a beautiful amount of sand there was. It was hard to believe there was so much.

They even had to plow in some of the areas.


We both climbed to the top of one of the dunes. And walked down. We didn't think we wanted to try the sleds and have to sit for a long drive with sand in our clothes.





The sand felt great on my feet.

This is the hard-packed gypsum after the water evaporates and before it begins to break down.


I am sure that this place gets really busy later in the day and in the summer. We drove east on US-82 up and over the mountain from 4,300 feet to almost 8,000 and then back down to Artesia and then south to Carlsbad. This is a picture from the mountains looking back to the white sand dunes.

We stopped for lunch at a little barbecue place in Cloudcroft.