Been through the desert, but not like this.

I like odd things, and the beauty of the interwebs is that with a minimum of effort you can find something unique just about anywhere you go.  Just a couple hours north in New Mexico is White Sands National Park--not to be confused with White Sands Missile Range, which is just down the same road and a hell of a lot less welcoming.

White Sands is literally...white sand.  It is 275 miles of gypsum dunes, a remnant of the ancient inland seas that once covered North America.  When you first turn into the road, it looks like the rest of the desert down here: mostly flat and covered with a dozen types of fanged plants that all hate you.  The park road twists slowly past growing hills that gradually bleach from rusty beige to ivory; the plants fade away until there is nothing except the rolling, snowy dunes.

There are a couple of trails and boardwalks studded with informational signs.  We stopped at one.  It was a good introduction to the dunes.  Then it was on to the main attraction.

Further into the park, the paved road ends and the dirt road is blown over with fine gypsum sand.  It was rather like driving back in Alaska during the winter, where the road is made up and the lines don't really matter.  The dunes started to get bigger, easily thirty feet or higher.  I pulled over by a nice, empty dune and we piled out of the van, sleds in hand.

You read that right.  When you go to White Sands in the middle of the desert, you go sledding.  If you can, bring your own.  Sleds are available at the visitor's center but they're only marginally less expensive than a black-market kidney.  If you do succumb and buy the sleds, you can choose to return them on your way out and they will generously give you a keychain in return. The sled wax is helpful, though, so pick up a bar.

Despite it being the middle of the summer, my kids were barefoot within seconds.  I waited to see what happened to them; when they didn't start screaming about their feet burning, I kicked off my sneakers.  The sand was unexpectedly cool between my toes.  Digging down a little, it was positively damp.

Neat.

The girls were excited to sled for about ten minutes.  The sliding was okay as long as you positioned yourself on the sled just right and coated the bottom with copious amounts of wax.  They probably would have gone for longer if they didn't have to walk up a hill of sand over and over again.   Temperate or not, wading through all that was a workout.

Digging was a big hit, especially when we came back with the cousins a couple months later.  It was also fun to hike along the crest of the dunes and see for hundreds of miles.  What can I say?  I'm easily amused.

The visitor's center had a small display about the park and its history, and a much larger gift/snack store.  The best part of the center was the swallows that nested in the courtyard between the visitor center and the gift store.

On the two hour drive home we passed by White Sands Missile Range (which occasionally shuts down access to the park when they are firing missiles).  My mom had been stationed there years before, so it was cool to visit even briefly.  The missile range is where several types of missiles were developed and tested, including the first atomic bomb.  Limited tours are offered twice a year to visit Trinity Site.  I may drag the kids out for forced fun if I remember to make reservations. We also got to see the herd of oryx that range across the military installation, one of several species of exotic game (including Ibex and African Barbary Sheep) that were intentionally introduced by the New Mexico Game and Fish Department to encourage hunting.  They thrived on the missile range and are still available to hunt today.

Didn't get a picture of the oryx, so this will have to do.  Tagging dumpsters--the real reason to visit national parks.

The best thing that I can say about a trip is that it was worth the drive.  White Sands totally was, twice so far and counting.