Hidden New Mexico

On our way back to Texas.

We decided to take a somewhat circuitous route and see some sights along then way. We wound our way up from I-10 in Las Cruces, New Mexico, our goal was White Sands National Park. The Park received the honor of being elevated from a National Monument to a National Park in 2019. It was established as a National Monument in 1933 by President Hoover. There are subtle differences between the two designations, not readily apparent to the casual tourist. They mainly have to do with what the emphasis is when promoting the Park, a Monument highlights the scenic, scientific, and educational interests and a Park furthers this by adding cultural and natural resources.

            There, now you know too!

After a five-plus hour drive from Tucson, we pulled into the town of Alamogordo on Thursday afternoon with the idea of spending Friday exploring White Sands and a few local attractions (if there was enough time).  

We checked out some local brochures and the like after we pitched our “tent” on Thursday afternoon. It is far more pleasurable to drive half of the day and stop rather than cramming full days together on a trip. Luckily, we have a somewhat open-ended arrival in Texas as long as we’re back in time for Paula’s next surgeon’s follow-up appointment on Tuesday.

As you can see by the accompanying photographs, on a scale of 1 to 10, the weather is a 15! Cool desert nights, running into warm sunny days, the temps hovering around 80 during the day with less then 20% relative humidity and the nighttime temps cascade down to around 40 after sunset.

We discovered that White Sands National Park is not one of our largest, but it is the largest (of only a handful on Earth) of surface gypsum locations in any quantity. The process of making all of this “sand” starts like everything else around here, with water.

                        And wind.

Apparently when the ancient seabed’s left behind deposits of Gypsum (hydrated calcium sulphate, Ca SO4. 2H2O to be specific😊) a common mineral formed mainly by the evaporation of seawater; they had no idea that someday they would be the genesis of a unique landscape!  Known from antiquity, its name comes from the Arabic jips, for “plaster,” then to the Greek gypsos, for chalk.

            Enter the water, dry, windy, cycles of the modern era and the transformation of the calcium sulphate, combined with the wind-driven effects of making these crystals crash into each other so much that they eventually grind their way down to “sand’ sized particles and….

Voila!

We get a National park!

And the Air Force gets a missile test range!

Yes… our National Park is completely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Test Range that is still active today. So much so that the local highway and the Park are subject to long-term closures (hours) when a test is imminent.

                        Can you imagine back East….

“Uhh, yea, I’m gonna be a little late for work today, there’s a rocket test going on and the road is closed.”

                        Nope, can’t imagine that.

            The white sand in White Sands at times towers up to sixty feet tall when the dunes get going. As you may imagine, the place is ever-changing as the winds whip the sand around and form these gigantic dunes. The Park Store sells plastic saucers for anyone to climb the dunes and sled their way down. Since this is a Park and recreation is part of a Park’s goals, (and no damage occurs when sledding down) this is a very popular activity.

            Us old folk did not participate.

            We also discovered that unless you were to go on an extended hike, this Park can be viewed in about an hour or so. Think about it… No trees, no streams, only an endless view of (gorgeous) sand dunes. We arrived when the Park opened at 7:00 AM, mainly because the light is much better at that time, shadows of the dunes and the little ripples in the sand were far more dramatic than in in the middle of the day with the sun way up high. This means we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Besides, the loop that you can drive is only a few miles in and out, so it doesn’t take a lot of time to explore.

We did not see much wildlife, as most of that remains hidden during the day. Deserts are fairly nocturnal in nature.

We did spot an Oryx.

A what?

Yup, these critters were “imported” from Africa many years ago by the military base hoping to have them around for “hunting”. Well, what they did not count on was the fact that the African Lion (big) can keep these guys’ population in check while our (little) Bobcats take one look them and decide that a rabbit is easier to catch!

            So now we’ve got thousands of these invasive guys roaming around.

                                    It’s now only a little after 9 o’clock in the morning and we need something else to do. We decided to visit Pistachio Land, a roadside operation whose reason for existence is that little delicious nut, the pistachio. Apparently, we are in the heart of the pistachio growing area. This family-run enterprise has its own groves of trees plus quite a few grape vines that produce several varieties of wine including a pistachio-infused one that was quite tasty!

And even though it was 5 o’clock somewhere, it was only 10 o’clock where we were!

A “tasting” was had.

We now have two bottles.

They also have their own ice cream, so we felt obligated to try (and consume) some of their pistachio ice cream. We nearly spoiled our lunch as a “small scoop” request does not seem to matter when ordering.

                        We did not complain.

                        We returned to the motorhome, and promptly fell asleep for a bit, then had lunch and ventured out to what was going to be that local “find” of the day. Being somewhat enthused about petroglyphs and pictographs left behind by the ancient civilizations that inhabited our western states, we chanced upon the Mother Lode of petroglyphs at a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) site about 30 miles north of where we were.

                    Named Three Rivers petroglyphs, this site has about 21,000(!) individual petroglyphs.

We lost count at over two hundred.

Here is our lesson for today… a petroglyph is created when someone takes a rock, chisel, or anything, and pecks away at a rock, leaving an indentation that is now there forever. This process becomes even more dramatic when the individual pecks away at a rock covered in “Desert Varnish” (that dark coloring) revealing a lighter color underneath for a nice contrast. Luckily for the Artist, Desert Varnish takes thousands and thousands of years to form so their artwork stays nice for a long time!

            These petroglyphs were fashioned by the Jornada Mogollon peoples who were contemporaries of our favorites, the Ancestral Puebloans. These petroglyphs are entirely different than those of the aforementioned folks which makes it even more interesting when comparing these older civilizations. Most of these are about a thousand years old.