White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

White Sands is one of our favourite places to visit. I don't know why, there aren't many trails here to hike. But, you can walk out onto the cool, white sand and go for miles. Kids sled down the dunes. I guess what we love about it is the spectacular photography and the location in the Tularosa Basin nestled between the Sacramento Mountains to the east and the San Andreas Mountains to the west, near the city of Alamagordo.

The sand dunes are fed by the winds blowing from the southwest across Lake Lucero which is a deposit of gypsum and selenite crystals. The dunes are a beautiful, white colour, but very alkaline and salty making conditions tough for animal and plant life.

Here the sand has engulfed a skunkbush sumac tree and solidified around it, forming these gypsum pedestals. The trees may continue to bloom yellow and white flowers, and red and orange berries in the spring.

A young yucca, with its elongated shadow and the sand ripples make a gorgeous shot.

The Soaptree Yuccas grow so tall. This one dwarfs me.

The gypsum sand re-crystalizing as selenite.

The next few days, and the last days, of this trip are supposed to be spent in Carlsbad, New Mexico visiting Carlsbad Caverns (again) and Sitting Bulls Falls (for the first time), but suddenly a really good four-day window opens up and we decide that, after spending the night in Carlsbad to visit with friends Grace and Greg (whom we first met in St. George in December 2015 and again accidentally met at Lake Mead in December 2016), we will drive straight home.

The 1,800-mile (2,900-km) drive home is gloriously uneventful, and we arrive home, safe and sound, to great weather and our greatly missed family. Another trip completed. I will post one more blog, outlining trip numbers - distances, costs, etc.

Space Tour - Part 3B, Alamogordo, NM

Brad walking on the dunes at White Sands National Monument

Alamogordo is partly "famous" for its white sand dunes in the White Sands National Monument.  We visited here on our first trip in 2010, and are back now mostly because Brad loves to play in the sand.  We wait for the calmest day to hike the Alkali Flats Trail in the dunes which are only up to 60 feet in height, but still provide lovely views of the mountain ranges on either side of this Tularosa Valley.  The day is perfect, with a very warm sun and still desert air.  A few other people are hiking the dunes, but we don't run into anyone since we go off the actual trail and follow the pristine sand up and down from dune to dune.  We actually hike in our bare feet, and the sand is cool, really cold when you dig just under the surface.  It's a great, relaxing day.

Soap-tree Yucca in the dunes at White Sands National Monument

Rockets at the Missile Museum, Organ Mountains in the background

The White Sands National Monument is surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range, a military installation.  They have a missile museum which we visit.  In an outdoor "park", more than 50 missiles and rockets which were tested at this base from the 1950s to the 1980s are on display, as well as a few planes and a helicopter.  Inside, is a V-2 missile, which was developed by Wernher von Braun during WWII.  These bombs were used in raids on London, England and northern Europe, but had little impact on the outcome of the war.  After the war, von Braun and his V-2 were brought to America, specifically the White Sands Missile Range for further development and testing, but as a rocket, not a bomb.  It is this research that led to the rockets used in the Apollo missions and finally putting a man on the moon.  Inside the museum, there is also a nice exhibit on the Trinity Site and an explanation of the Manhattan Project (the design and building of the first atomic bomb) which occurred in Northern New Mexico at Los Alamos.  The Trinity Site is about 60 miles northwest of Alamogordo, still on the White Sands Missile Range, but only open to the public on the first Saturday in April and October.

Water Tank Mural at the Space Murals Museum, Organ, NM

For fun, we cross the beautiful, jagged Organ Mountains to the town of Organ, and go to the Space Murals Museum.  Here, a water tank has been painted with murals depicting some of America's space history.  Inside the museum are interesting, donated pieces - space suits, parachutes, rocket parts, and lots of photos.

And that leaves only one more stop on our Space Tour, at least for this year.  Next, off to Roswell and the International UFO Museum.  I'm really curious to see this one as people around here now say that the official military information has been declassified and "they" are coming clean about the incident - and it WAS a UFO that crashed that night in 1947.  Yet to be convinced...

Valley of Fires

North of Alamogorda, near Carrizozo, New Mexico, is Valley of Fires.  This is a lava field 44 miles (71 Km) long and 2 to 5 miles wide through the Tularosa Basin which flowed southward after spewing from volcanic vents on at least two occasions, most recently about 1,500 to 2,000 years ago.  We are camped on a kipuka (a cool Hawaiian word - say it), which is an area of higher ground that the lava flowed around, leaving these islands of sandstone and soil.

The crusted lava looks like it has flowed quite slowly as it is very swirly (a very technical geological term, right Dolores?), which makes the black patterns very beautiful.  It almost looks like and artist's canvas or a lazy river at Disney World.  We are in a valley and the land here is quite flat except for the "kipukas", so perhaps the flows were slow, causing the twisted flows.  The Recreation Area where we are camped is centred around fallen lava tubes and bubbles, so many areas are sunken.  The loose pieces of lava sound like broken glass, although they are heavier than the lava we experienced in Arizona where there are hundeds of volcanic cones.  The visitor's centre says that this lava is olivine basalt, similar to Hawaiian lava flows.  In this valley, the flow is so rough and broken, it could only be crossed on foot (as opposed to a donkey cart, I suppose).  We are surprised to learn that we are allowed to walk anywhere on the lava field, not just along the path, but the lava is fairly sharp so we have to be careful, although we do not venture far.  This area contains many pressure ridges, fissures, lava bubbles where gases built up when the lava was hot and collapsed as the lava cooled, and tubes where the lava once flowed and then collapsed as it cooled.  It is difficult to climb, especially with cacti in the way.

Marilyn a little off the path

Many plants and animals live here in the lava field; in fact there is more plant life here than we have seen anywhere so far in our desert travels.  There are junipers and many kinds of cactus including the ever-present prickly pear, grasses, the banana yucca, the sotol (which resembles the yucca but isn't), and annual & perennial flowers (which are out of season now).  We don't see any wildlife (none, nada, zilch), but apparently this is home to the kit fox, coyotes, deer, many birds including owls, eagles, hawks and other small perching birds (okay, I saw about a dozen little birds), snakes (in hibernation now, thank goodness), rodents, rabbits, a small band of Barbary sheep, bobcats and rigtail cats.

The first day we are here is totally overcast in the morning (our first cloudy day) and VERY windy and cold.  In fact, in the morning, we can't see the northern end of the eastern mountain range - the Sacramento Mountains.  At first, Brad thinks it is fog or mist, but then I see a few dry flakes of snow falling outside of our trailer windows and we realize that there is a blizzard blowing in the mountains obscuring our visibility of the range.  Okay - I'm really sure we left home to escape SNOW - hoser!  But here it is, almost as far south as we can go in the state of New Mexico anyway.  Fortunately, we don't get any more snow than those few dry flakes.  The sun finally comes out mid-afternoon and so we walk the trail through the lava flow, but man, is it cold!  I think my ears are going to fall off.  I have brought a winter coat and this day I have to use it.

The broken flows of Valley of Fires Recreation Area

The second night we camp here, the temperature drops to 10F (that's about -15C)!!!  Our water hose outside stands up all by itself even though Brad disconnects it from the tap and our trailer so we don't burst the couplings.  We're pretty sure the water in our tanks is at least slushy, but nothing seems to have frozen.  The second day is sunny and warmer (if you're in the sun).  No wind today.  Brad goes out and hikes the trail again before we leave to go back to Alamogordo.  I stay inside trying to warm up - I'm having one of those days where I just can't get warm, even though I have the temperature inside the trailer up to 80F!

And a funny thing happens on the drive back to the city.  It's only a one-hour drive back south to Alamogordo, so I don't bother to put Grady's food and water dishes in the back seat of the truck.  Surely he can survive for one hour without them.  Apparently not!  About five minutes into our drive, he starts howling from the back seat, and wandering from the back seat to the front seat and back again.  The howling won't stop.  We can't figure it out.  He hasn't howled in the car since day 2!  I try to put him on my lap, but he won't settle - he goes to the back seat and howls again.  I say to Brad, "Maybe he's upset that I didn't put his food and water dish back there.  Maybe he's hungry or thirsty all of a sudden.  I think you're going to have to stop and I'm going to have to get them from the trailer."  Fortunately, we're not on a busy highway, so Brad stops at a small pulloff, and I get Grady's life sustenance from the trailer, and put them on the floor in the back seat where they belong.  As we get rolling again, Grady checks the dishes out, but does not eat or drink, jumps up on the centre console between Brad and me, and goes to sleep.  "All is well now.  Whew!  Everything is in place.  My food has not been left behind and I will not starve to death for the rest of the trip."  Stupid cat!

The reason we return to Alamogordo is because we are booked into a tour to Lake Lucero at the White Sands National Monument on Saturday afternoon.  This is a Ranger-guided auto caravan across a military missile base to a dry lake bed to see selenite crystals that eventually become the white sands in the dunes we saw the other day.  Another geology lesson?  Surely you've had enough?

Selenite crystals stuck in the gypsum at Lake Lucero

The selenite crytals are beautiful - very sharp around the edges, but very soft on their face - you can score them with a fingernail.  They can be dissolved in water, and eroded by the wind, thus creating the sand dunes.  Selenite crystals are just the way that gypsum forms when it cystalizes.  Every mineral has certain properties and these are gypsum's.  Some crytals are four feet long, but are mostly underground, exposing only a few inches or a foot perhaps by heavy rains.  They protrude from the ground at sharp angles, so you wouldn't want to be walking out here in bare feet.  Their colourings range from a light tan colour to almost green, depending on the mineral in the ground where they form.  They are odd and stunning to witness.  They glimmer when the sun hits them (yes, another sunny day).  What a fantastic opportunity to come see this.  There are only two tours per month on the last Saturday of each month - rules of the military base.

American military paranoia?  We had to drive our trailer in to the Lake trailhead (18 miles across the base), which was no big deal because the road was paved.  We weren't allowed to leave it just off the highway outside the base gate.  Also, no photos could be taken during the drive across the base - it was barren desert!  We were not allowed to stop our vehicles along the drive to the trailhead while on the base.  The rules were very explicit.  I think we might have been shot if we'd disobeyed!  We were joking with our park ranger guide before we entered - "We have come to see your nuclear wessels."  Remember the line from "Star Trek 4, the Voyage Home", spoken by Chekov in his Russian accent?  The Ranger got it right away and laughed like crazy.  "Yeah, you'll probably be shot," she laughed.  The base is a missile test range, and they do run at least two tests per week, which is a shame so close to such a beautiful natural area.    Only in America!

Is That Snow or Sand

In this land of contrast, we travel west only 20 miles to move from cool sparse green forests with running springs to warmer endless sand dunes in White Sands National Monument.  The only simularity is that both snow and gypsum sand is white.  The trip takes us from over 9000 ft to 4000 ft in a short distance of about 19 miles from the small town of Clouldcroft to Alamogordo, New Mexico.  We look forward to breathing air at the lower altitude to avoid panting with the smallest of physical effort.  During our decline, it's our truck's first test to hold back the 13,000 lbs. trailer down a 6% grade without burning the brakes out.  The big 6.6 litre diesel engine did an amazing job slowing us down in manual 2nd gear at 3500 rpm, requiring braking only about 20% of the time.  Despite this, half way down we pulled over to let the 4 disc brakes cool down as the brake linings started to smell.  It was clear that if we did not use the low gears it would be detrimental to the truck brakes.  The electro-magnetic drum trailer brakes did not overheat.

The sands at White Sands National Monument comprise the world's largest gypsum type (calcium sulphate) of sand dunes in the world.  The gypsum sand is rare.  Gypsum was deposited in the bottom of an ancient sea, uplifted with the Rocky Mountains and collapsed into a dome called the Tularosa Basin between the San Andres and Sacramento Mountain Ranges.  The gypsum also accumulates from rivers running down from the mountains and then the gypsum gets trapped in the basin and as the lake beds dry up from time to time they form gypsum Selenite crystals (up to 3 feet long) in Lake Lucero (which we will be touring on Saturday on a once a month guided opportunity).  Lastly, the wetting, drying and freezing of these crystals break them down into little sand particles small enough for strong south westerly winds to blow them where they accumulate into the 60 ft high sand dunes.  The dunes appear as white snow to us and we see kids and parents tobogganing on discs which makes our surroundings only appear more like snow.  The toboganning here is great.  The sand in your underwear is less annoying than snow in your underwear.  The struggle for life to exist in this environment is difficult, yet even mammals such as small foxes (smaller than your average house cat) survive here.

The expanse of the dunes (with three large mammals exposed!)

As we set off to hike this mysterious and rare landscape it eludes us when we try to comprehend the time it must have taken to accumulate this vast area of sand from the selenite crystals in nearby Lake Lucero .  The dunes engulf 275 square miles and so we use our GPS to avoid getting lost.  Getting lost out here can be life threatening.  Although we know of no rattlesnakes or scorpions in the dunes, there is no water and although day time highs are 60F this time of year, lows typically drop to near freezing and the winds here can pick up to 50 mph without warning.  For a short period just before sunset the winds stopped during one of our hikes and the old familiar dead silence came upon us as we tried to take in the vast distances across the dunes between each mountain range.  We stop breathing momentarily to hear our heart beat.

Nearing sunset, you can see the ripples in the sand

[note - this blog written by Brad - you can tell by the technical truck stuff at the beginning!]