White Sands National Monument

This place is neat.

On a road trip across the country, I stopped here on recommendation from someone at the event I was attending (the reason for the road trip) It wasn't on my planned route, and was a little out of the way, but it turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip.

There was a highway closure over the white plains bombing site which surrounds the white plains national monument I made it through the road block (can you check ahead of time?) and was able to spend sometime on the drive in the park while I also waited for the highway to re-open.

The drive cost $3 per person (good for 7 days) and is a 8-mile loop that takes you into and through the pasty dunes. There are many places to stop and picnic and you may want to make sure there is some cardboard in your car that you can use to slide down a hot sand dune.

The White Gypsum that the dunes are made of is very unique. Gypsum is usually water soluable and so it doesn't generaly form dune, but because the valley contains the gypsum, and the water sits, the gypsum does not dissolve. Also, only the top few inches of the gypsum dunes are made of loose sand. Rainwater falling on the dunes dissolves some of the gypsum and cements the sand grains together, creating a crude form of plaster of Paris. This makes the white sand dunes easy to walk on.

Amazing transformation as you begin your drive the desert you are already in is pretty desolate and tan, but then it gets even more desolate and bright white from the sandy gypsum

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