Las Cruces, New MexicoNov 4, 2010
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One of the many parking and picnic areas. People with their sleds.
Rick looking in amazement at the sand, it was very bright!
We climbed the dunes and took a walk into no mans land!...
| Rick had a long drive today! HA HA! We drove about 40 miles or less all the way from Deming to Las Cruces! We have driven a lot of short days in our travels, I suppose because we have a basic plan of action, but accept the fact that flexibility is key. We go where we think we will find interesting things to see, and also realize we can't always see everything in an area there is to see. We will spend just one night here in Las Cruces; at the Coachlight Hotel and RV Park. The park is another Passport American Park, which offers us 50% off their standard rates. In this case we will be paying $18.50 for the night, we have full hookups, with cable as well. The park is nice, it has nice big spots, and in a convenient area. Once we got set up, we went to White Sands National Monument in Alamogordo, NM. This was the reason for our stay here in Las Cruces. It was about an hour drive, and on the way we drove through(the military owns all the land on either side of the highway) the White Sands Missile Range, it surrounds the park as well. It was first used as a military proving grounds after WWII for testing rockets captured from German armed forces. The 4,000-square-mile range is still an important site for testing experimental weapons and space technology. For safety, both the park and U.S Hwy 70 between the park and Las Cruces may be closed during missile range tests.(good thing) Closures average twice a week, generally lasting one to two hours. We din't know they tested so often, so we were lucky to pick a day and time to pass through without any dlelays. Since the National Monument runs right up to the Missile Range, and we would be wandering around the National Monument and playing in the sand, there were reminders in the welcome center and in the parking areas on signs to avoid picking up any strange looking missile like items because they could be live. I think the odds of this happening are slim, I hope anyway, but they need to post this information for our protection and theirs. White Sands National Monument: At the northern end of the Chihuahuan Desert lies a mountain-ringed valley, the Tularosa Basin. Rising from the heart of this basin is one of the world's great natural wonders-the glistening white sands of New Mexico. Great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of the desert here and created the largest gypsum dune field in the world. The dunes, brilliant and white, are ever changing. They grow, crest, then slump but always advance. Slowly but relentlessly the sand, driven by strong southwest winds, covers everything in its path. Within the extremely harsh environment of the dune field, even plants and animals adapted to desert conditions, struggle to survive. Only a few species of plants grow rapidly enough to survive burial by the moving dunes, but several types of small animals have evolved white colorations to camouflage them in the gypsum sand. A little bit about how the dunes were formed: the gypsum that forms the white sand was deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea covering this area 250 million years ago. Eventually turned into stone, these gypsum-bearing marine deposits were uplifted into a giant dome 70 million years ago when the Rocky Mountains formed. Ten million years ago the center of this dome started to collapse, creating the Tularosa Basin. The remaining sides of the original dome form the San Andres and Sacramento mountain ranges that now ring the Tularosa Basin. It is a rare form of sand, the common mineral gypsum, hydrous,calcium sulfate, is rarely found as sand because it is soluble in water. Rain and snow in the mountains dissolve gypsum from the rocks and carry it into the Tularosa Basin. Rivers would usually carry dissolved gypsum to the sea, but no river drains Tularosa Basin. This place is simply amazing, it seems to appear out of no where. The sand is so white, and it feels cool to the touch. You can rent or buy sleds (the round saucer type) and slide down the dunes. We saw several families picnicking and sledding on a beautiful hot sunny day! Our kids and grandkids would love this place. As you can see in the pictures, they have to plow the roads to keep the sand off of them, and as it is piles along side the road...it looks just like snow to us Iowans! We were so glad we took this side trip. |
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