Sand dunes & missiles
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2010
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277
366
Trip End
Jul 13, 2012
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
We arrived at White Sands National Monument Visitor Centre around 11.15am, to find the road ahead closed off by police and a fire engine parked in the car park. Dean wandered over to the fireman standing by the engine and asked what was going on. We were told that the road was closed off because White Sands Missile Range were doing some testing. This happens every so often and when it does the road closes and so does the tourist loop road in the National Monument, usually for about 3 hours. Luckily for us though, we'd caught the end of it and the roads were due to open again around 12pm. We spent the time looking around the Visitor Centre and around 12.15pm the roads opened. We then drove the scenic loop road through the white sand dunes. It was quite amazing really, to think that in the middle of all this scrubland/desert are these massive, pure white sand dunes. They are created from gypsum which is a natural substance found locally and can be found in toothpaste and chocolate, to name but a few. After walking over the dunes we had lunch surrounded by them and then headed out of the park after taking a quick look at a playa (dry lake). A further 30 miles down the US70 was White Sands Missile Range Museum, so we turned off and drove off towards to the range. Parked up and then showed our ID to be let into the base. We then spent around an hour or so looking through the museum and also the Missile Park. Around 4pm we left the base and continued west and then north to Truth or Consequence, (passing through another border control on the way), where we scouted out the local Walmart and then headed off to McDonalds to check email, etc. Once we'd caught up on all the gossip, pregnacies and pod, we drove back to Walmart to park up and cook dinner. After dinner we started to watch Life (with David Attenbrough) and Cat started to fall asleep, so whilst she snoozed I got back on some free wi-fi and caught up on some pod photos. Around 11pm we settled in and got some sleep.
