White Sandy Beach

From Cloudcroft we drove down into the pancake flat plain between the Sacramento and the San Andres mountains and drove past the Holloman Air Force Base into White Sands National Monument past a giant sign that read "Road closed when light flashing due to missile tests". The park is nestled inside about 5000 square miles of land (four times the size of Rhode Island) belonging to the army between it's two largest bases, White Sands Missile Range to the north and west and Fort Bliss to the south and east.

Once you are inside the dune area, you get this uncanny feeling that you are at the beach. The brain relaxes. The mind imagines the ocean behind the next dune. The ears almost hear the rollers breaking on the beach. Vivian and Evan went crazy. They ran up and slid and rolled down the dunes. They played in the pure white soft gypsum sand. The covered themselves and their hair and clothes in the stuff. When it was time to leave, it was obvious that they could have stayed for days.