After spending one night in Las Cruces, we drove over to White Sands. I was excited to see the sand dunes out in the middle of nowhere. But the icing on the cake for this particular place was that Gracie was able to go with us.
A girl and her dog.
The dunes were amazing. Beautiful and pristine (but for some footprints), the sand dunes looked like they were out of a movie. We bought the obligatory sled(s) to slide down them. The park has a pretty good gig going. Tourists buy the sled for $20, and then the park buys it back for $5. You also need to buy wax (which they were out of when we were there). We decided to buy another tourist’s sled for $10. (We ended giving that one to a family as we were leaving.)
The dunes hadn’t received rain in quite some time when we were there, so the sand was very dusty. As such, the sledding was pretty rubbish. I’m not sure how long we would’ve been there even if it had been stellar though only because the walk back up the sand dune was shockingly difficult. We were all beat after only about an hour in the park. The kids were able to pick up a couple of more junior ranger badges.
The grand plan was to stop over at the White Sands Missile Range Museum, but it isn’t open on Sunday. Caden was pretty disappointed.
After leaving the sand dunes and running back into Las Cruces to fetch the RV, we hit the road towards Gila Cliffs. About thirty minutes into the drive, everyone decided that the one and two night stopovers were getting old. So we decided to go ahead and make the long haul drive on into Tucson, Arizona.
It seemed to be around this point that Kitty Itty Bitty really settled into the adventure. She would happily sit in her cat carrier as long as the door was open and loved to come out periodically to look out of a window.
