The White Dunes Of Sand
To the land of white sand in the Chihuahuan desert. The drive wan’t so long, only a few hours, and we were all set up and ready to go by 2:00pm. We borrowed some disc sleds from the front office, because you can actually toboggan down the sand dunes, which is super cool. We stopped at the visitor’s centre before we headed in to the monument. There was a short video on the formation of the monument, talking about how the dunes were relatively new, only formed around 7000 to 4000 years ago. The sand is so white because it’s actually fine grains of gypsum, a very soft crystal that forms in the mountains and gets blown to the edge of Alkali Flat, the remains of the ancient Lake Otero, that borders one side of the White Sands. During monsoon season, the flats fill with water and
form a temporary lake that draws in animals from all over the area. When it rains, the gypsum gets washed down from the mountains to join the rest of the mineral that accumulated there during the rest of the year thanks to the wind. When the flats dry up, they leave behind gypsum formations that are very soft and eventually get eroded by the wind and blown into the nearby dunes to join the rest of the sand. It was pretty interesting to hear about. After the video finished, we drove right into the monument and found a spot to park so we could do some tobogganing. It wasn’t nearly as fast as sledding on snow is, but it
was still cool. Because really, how many people can say that they’ve sledded on sand. Kizmet, who thought the sand was snow, had a bit of a stupid moment when she was running around and tried to scoop up some of the “snow” as a drink. Needless to say, that didn’t go over so well but she still seems to be functioning, so apparently she didn’t get all that much. We played around for about and hour and by the time we got back in the truck, the sun was starting to set. We couldn’t have stayed any longer though, because we had forgotten to bring literally everything one is supposed to carry in the desert : hats, sunscreen and water. How intelligent of us. Luckily it wasn’t too hot, so not even Dad got sunburned, but we decided to be better prepared the next day. Peace out m8s.
