March 2, 2023
So glad to be in New Mexico today. The weather is sunny and will reach the 70s. Why you ask? Easy, in St. David, Arizona where we just left, they had 4 inches of snow! Very unusual and by 5:00 PM it was all gone, but still. We are going to go someplace today that looks like snow. We are headed to White Sands National Park. Our RV park gave us a plastic sled to take to the dunes so you can slide down the dunes. Our first stop was the Visitor’s Center. We watched a short video on the park, its location and how it was/is formed. Very interesting. As we exited the Visitor’s Center, we saw an owl sitting in the tree just outside the center. Cool. We had Bree with us and dogs are allowed on some trails. We used the National Parks app to take the audio self-guided tour. We stopped at a few of the stops and took a stroll through and on the dunes. Very weird in that it feels like sand but looks like snow. It is actually gypsum. We found a spot and decided to give the sledding a try. We had seen several people sledding but wanted to find a place where people wouldn’t laugh at me.
I tried first. I climbed a dune with the sled. I chose this dune as it wasn’t too steep and I didn’t need to mess up my body any more than it already was. I got to the top of the dune and found two things that wouldn’t work. The first was that the sled was very small for my very large body. Second was that the dune was not steep enough. I decided to call it quits.
Nancy came up the hill to assist me in getting up and discussed the facts that I just figured out. She went a little further up the dune and over to the edge where it drops off almost 90 degrees. She waited for me to get back into the truck so I could video her run. She did great! About halfway down she decided that if she continued at her current speed to the bottom there might be a sudden stop so she put her feet out to slow her down. It was an interesting experience. After all of this, we could not dust ourselves off enough. There was some white sand in our clothes, truck, etc. Its like going to the beach.
We got to see some beautiful mountains and scenery. It was a very fun day.
