Dunes and Dwellings

White Sands National Monument in
New Mexico

I started off my day by stopping at White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.    I took a few hikes through the gigantic gypsum sand dunes.  There are a few plants that can live in the dessert and gypsum sand, but as you get further away from the visitor center there are fewer plants.  When you get deep into the middle of the dunes, there is almost no vegetation at all.  All you can see is miles of rolling, snow white, dunes and the mountains in the distance.  It’s quite a beautiful, yet strange sight.  It’s as if you are at the beach in the desert!  Luckily, the gypsum doesn’t get very hot, so you can walk on the sand in bare feet even when it’s extremely hot!  The best part is that you can sled down the dunes!   That’s right. . .you can go sledding in the desert!  I had a blast climbing to the top of the tallest dunes I could find (they get about sixty feet tall) and sliding back down on my bright green sled!  I was able to get going pretty fast down several of the dunes!  I could be friends with the person who came up with this idea!  So fun!

My shiny green sled
on the dunes

After a most enjoyable morning of sledding, I took my sand covered self and got back into the car.  I started driving west.  I had a minor moment of panic when all the traffic on the interstate had to pull over for a border check point.  I was pretty sure I was on an east-west road, and there wasn’t much chance that I was about to accidently cross into Mexico, but the fact that everyone had to stop had me second guessing myself.  It turned out that I was safely on a road that was totally contained by the United States and it was just some random checkpoint.

Gila Cliff Dwelling
National Monument

I kept driving and it kept getting more and more beautiful!  There were mountains everywhere I looked!  New Mexico is quiet beautiful!  It is also very sparsely populated.  Things that looked like they would be fairly big towns on the map, turned out to be tiny.  In between the tiny towns, there is nothing except beautiful scenery!  As I started driving up into the mountains in Gila National Forest, I got even deeper into the unpopulated beauty!  The drive was slow since the road was winding its way up a mountain (with very few guard rails!), but extraordinarily gorgeous!  I even got to see two rainbows over one of the peaks at one point!  I found a campground about three quarters of the way up the mountain.  I had a lovely spot overlooking a ravine.  

Gila Cliff Dwellings 

The next day I kept driving up the mountain until I got to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument.  After about a half a mile of hiking, I had a great view of several cave openings in the mountain.  After a little more hiking, I got to a park ranger who gave me a private tour of several caves!  She pointed out several pictographs and shared what little is known about the people who lived there!   It was amazing to realize that I was seeing remains of the dwellings from the 1200’s!  There was even some evidence that people had used the cave significantly before the 1200’s!  It’s totally amazing to be able to see remains of such ancient people and activity for myself!