White night in White Sands, New Mexico
Friday, April 22nd, 2011April 18th-April 19th
From El Paso, we drove to the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. These great wave-like dunes are made from gypsum sand and encompass 275 miles of the Chihuahuan Desert. We were planning to camp there, but Fabien was worried that the high winds were a bad mix for camping in the dunes. When we arrived at the Visitors’ Center, the ranger assured me that the winds would calm down after sunset, so we got a backcountry pass to spend the night in the dunes and then started our tour of White Sands. The ranger also gave us an information pamphlet about dangerous debris we could encounter- unexploded ordnance from the White Sands Missile Range. Cool…
You can visit White Sands by doing an 8 mile loop driving tour interspersed with information panels (what I call drive-up tourism) and nature trails. The first part of the road was paved and the landscape resembled what we had seen of the Chihuhuan Desert in western Texas, desert grass and agave plants. As we made our way closer to the dunes, there was less and less vegetation until all of a sudden we were in a sea of white. The road turned into packed sand. The wind had stirred up the sand in the air, whiting out the mountains in the background. It was very disorienting.
We parked at the “trailhead” to the primitive camping spots, prepared our packs and I put on my hiking boots thinking it would be easier to walk in the sand. That turned out to be a mistake as they quickly filled up with sand. There were several posts dug into the sand directing us to our camping area, but we had the impression it was easy to get off track. Our camping spot was in an area with some low vegetation, but the wind was so strong,we moved to a spot closer to the dune, hoping for some protection from the wind. In the end, we decided to eat dinner and watch the sunset before putting up the tent. About an hour after sunset, the winds were still blowing and the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees. The night sky was clear and we could see millions of stars. We climbed up to the top of the dune to watch the spectacular moonrise. It was a full moon night and the white light of the moon would light up the desert all night.
Unfortunately, the wind never died down and the fine white sand came in through the air vents in the tent. We were both covered in a fine white sand. By 5 AM neither of us had slept more than an hour. The wind calmed down and our alarm went off indicating it was time to wake up for the sunrise. Bleary-eyed we watched the sun come up, as the moon still shone brightly. The sun warmed us up, we packed up camp and hiked back to the car. The sky was clear and we could finally see the mountains in the background of the white dunes. We found a picnic shelter that resembled something out of Tomorrowland at Disney World, and made a hot breakfast. The morning was as surreal as the surroundings.
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