White Sands

Mamma here...

As we left Alamogordo we stopped in to White Sands National Monument. The sand dunes look just like the ones you would find on the the beach of the West Coast of Florida...pure white and fine but these dunes are actually made of gypsum. There is a lake bed that periodically fills and dries up located just south west of the dunes. As the lake bed evaporates it leaves gypsum crystal behind. These crystals are actually a light brown/yellow color but as the crystals disintegrate in the wind and are blown around, they scratch each other, resulting in the while color we see. The prevailing winds are out of the southwest, so the crystals blow to the northeast into the dunes.

We took a hike through the dunes with a guidebook that showed us what kind of animals live there by their tracks. We saw kit fox tracks, bunnies, snakes, caterpillars and road runner. It was clear this desert had plenty of activity going on.

The boys had a great time sliding down the slopes and playing in the sand. In this last picture, they are holding up fossilized tree stems and roots that the guidebook told us are scattered across this one particular area.