A few months ago we found ourselves in the midst of one of the world’s greatest natural wonders and our minds are blown. The fine grains of white sand are waving across the desert floor and we’re frozen, as if our brains can’t compute what our senses are experiencing. There’s no poetic verses flowing out of our mouths, no heightened sense of enlightenment, not even fantasies of Arabian royalty riding past on well adorned horses…it’s just the one simple word playing over and over: Unbelievable.
It’s our second visit to White Sands National Monument and we’re completely overwhelmed, again! The first visit we spent sledding down the tallest hills we could find, so this time we set off for a hike out to the end of the dunes on the Alkali Flat Trail. We expected a decent hike filled with “more of the same white hills,” but instead we had an experience that’s just one of those adventures you have to lace up your hiking shoes and see-to-believe.
Looking back at our photographs it’s hard to believe we were there…or that such a place even exists. White Sands is one of those incredible places where you can physically see how time and wind work together to shape the world. Each wisp and gust of wind wipes away footprints, molds the ground around you and changes the landscape.
It’s all unbelievably surreal…but real it is. This wonderland of dazzling white waves can be found in the heart of the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico, where giant dunes made of gypsum sand stretch over 275 square miles of desert and reach up to 60 feet high. All this just a mere 48 miles away from our hotel; but what a world away it is!
Both our visits to this amazing place have been during winter and spring when visitation is low (so we had the place mostly to ourselves) and temperatures are mild (between 65 & 80 degrees). Sadly, that means we have missed out on one very cool event…White Sands by lunar light! Oh well, I guess that means we’ll have to plan another visit.
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