We stopped in Las Cruces on our way home from the eclipse. We’ve stopped there before but just for an overnight. This time we decided to spend a day and check out White Sands National Park. I’m glad we did.
It’s about an hour drive from Hacienda RV Park in Las Cruces through the White Sands Missile Range. Thankfully there were no missiles on our visit as we neglected to check the park closure website before we left for the park.
The road climbs the Andres Mountains on route 70 out of Las Cruces then goes down into the Alkali Flat. It’s a wide-open valley; I can see why it’s used as a missile range.
The white sands are visible on the left and got whiter as we approached. It opened in January, 1933 as a monument and was designated a national park in 2019. The visitors center was a jobs project during the Great Depression.
We had snow discs in the truck, courtesy of free rental from the campground. The store in the welcome center sold them and we saw several laying next to trash cans inside the park. Free rental trumps purchase every time.
The road inside the park is a long loop, about 16 miles total, with perfectly set up places to stop on the right the whole way.
Our first stop was the Interdune Boardwalk. It’s a raised walkway over the dunes with vista points and information stations along the way. Fun fact: 280 million years ago this area was under water.
The sun shines bright on the white sand, don’t forget a hat and sunscreen!
The plants growing out of the white sand look almost like a rare snow scene in the desert. It is an area full of life. Plants, lizards and more live in the seemingly unforgivable landscape. It would have been fun to be there right after sunset to see what other life comes out of the bushes.
The yucca tree is prevalent, much like in the high deserts of Arizona, California and Nevada.
The gypsum sand is very fine and soft making it easy to see the wind ripples, animal footprints and a random sand angel. Some of the wind ripples looked like the corduroy of a freshly groomed ski run.
Loose sand shifts with the wind which means sand covered roads towards the back of the loop. No worries for any car as it wasn’t deep. It kind of looked like we were driving on snow.
We were excited to slide down the sand hill. We found a “hill” that had lots of slide tracks so we figured it would be a good place to start. Our free rental disks came with ski wax, the guy at the RV park office said it would help us go faster. We waxed up and set off. Let’s just say it wasn’t the E-ticket slide we expected. I bet kids go down much faster than a 6’5” guy.
We continued along the loop and got to the group use area, complete with ramada covered picnic tables. That’s where we saw the guy with a canoe strapped on his SUV. We had to see this. We stopped and tried not to be obvious about watching. He drug it up the sliding hill and directed his family where to sit. We were surprised he put his wife in front, two small kids in the middle and he took the back. He pushed them over the edge and got in where they promptly stopped. It was a “butt skooch” for a few feet then they gave up. They laughed and laughed and drug the canoe back up for another try.
We had a good day playing in the sand and trying to slide down fast like on snow. Not a bad few hours practicing for retirement. We can’t wait to bring out granddaughters!
My Dad was stationed there for a few years when he was in the Air Force.
one good thing about the gypsum is that it doesn’t get hot like sand. Stays cool all the time.