White Sands National Monument, NM

The last of the National Parks and Monuments that we visited on the great road trip is one of my all time favorites -- White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

There's two parts of White Sands -- the National Park part, and the Missile Range. The National Park is about 30 square miles, while the Missile Range is larger than total area of Rhode Island and Delaware combined!

This is the Nike Hercules Missile, the 2nd generation of the USA's anti-aircraft and anti-missile ballistics. This thing is absolutely huge, weighing nearly 11,000 pounds, it could still travel 2,500 miles/hour! I particularly enjoyed how these missiles were "recycled", as their successors were being developed... Can you guess what they were used for?

Target practice! :-)

Anyway, on to White Sands!

White Sands is the world's largest collection of gypsum based sand dunes. Gypsum sand is a really spectacular sand. If you've never felt it, there's nothing quite like it. It's far more fine, and powdery than normal sand.

Its texture is somewhere between baby powder, snow, and traditional silicon-based sand. Hard to comprehend, yes. Just get out there and find your nearest gypsum sand dunes (which are probably going to be White Sands, NM) and see for yourself.

We saw some more Joshua-tree looking yucca. I'm not quite sure if they are Joshua Trees or not, but they were very stark and beautiful all the same.

As usual, we're doing our best paparazzi, firing multiple cameras. What do you think? With a little more practice, could we make it as a National Geographic photography team?

So how are these dunes formed?

The mountains surrounding the valley are heavy in gypsum content. When it rains or snows (which isn't that often, but think over the millennia), the gypsum is dissolved in the water and run down into lakes in the basin. White gypsum sand is actually soluble in water, which is why it wouldn't make a very good beach sand :-)

This lake bed is actually dry (or nearly dry, as it was a bit muddy).

There were some odd cracks and tears in the floor of the lake bed.

In a macro detail, you can see the crystalline upper layer peeling back from the dirt below. How strange.

What was truly amazing were the crystals themselves.

They formed "shards" that were stunning.

Something of a Kirkland tradition, I suppose, Kim really likes to take pictures of our shadows when we're on holiday. I suppose they're amusing, but mostly, it just reminds me that I'm pretty short :-)

One more gratuitous shot of the Jeep. Giuseppe has been simply awesome this whole trip. Really reliable and comfortable and versatile. If we don't make it as NatGeo photographers, perhaps we'll apply in Chrysler's Jeep marketing department.

After the stop at the lake basin, we made our way deeper into the dunes.

And got out for a little hike over the hill. The sun was ablaze, but still it was only about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. The sand was actually ice cold! We were there around 10am in the morning, and most nights' low temperature is right around freezing.

As I said before, I had taken the entire day off. And so, once again, we're at the park on a weekday and we've basically got the park to ourselves.

Someone apparently left a butt print in the sand :-) Having spent so much time looking at petrified wood, fossils, and petroglyphs, I imagined the astonishment of an archeologist a few thousand years from now trying to make sense of this one :-)

There aren't many plants or wildlife of any kind in and among the slowly moving dunes, but this yucca did seem to get a foothold.

The dunes do actually move, perhaps a few inches per year. Wind blows constantly over the dunes, forming these ripples, granule by granule. Eventually the top tips over, causing a small avalanche, and as such, the dune "moves". Really amazing to imagine.

Well, speaking of moving, Kim had a bit of fun, doing her best Heidi Klum (I think Project Runway is one of the things Kim has missed most on this trip). If neither NatGeo nor Chrysler want me, I can't imagine I'd have any shot at Elle...

Playing aside, we really enjoy some peace and quiet, sitting for a while and reflecting a bit on our trip. We both realized that it was coming to an end. For most purposes, this was the last of our big stops. As soon as left White Sands that afternoon, we'd start the 600+ mile haul to Dallas. We talked a bit about what we had seen, what we had done, the people we met and those we reconnected with, what we'd miss, what would wouldn't miss, the reasons we'd be glad to get back home and some of the inevitable things we things we'd have to face once we were home.

We both agreed that this trip has been a wonderful thing for us, and that we found at least some of what we were were proverbially looking for.

We've chosen to share this experience with you, our thoughts, and hundreds of our best pictures. You've seen many, many pictures of the two of us smiling, healthy, and happy. We've had more than our fair share of grief this year, and we're still working on that even now. There are tough days, tough times, hard pills to swallow from time to time. But we're doing okay.

Alright. 34 states, 3 provinces, and 2 countries down... It's time to get back to Texas!

:-Dustin