Having visited many national parks none have been quite like the White Sands National Park. This national park is in south-central New Mexico. As we made our way to this national park, we saw rising in the distance large mountains and glistening white at the bottom of these mountains. As we got closer, we saw giant wave-like dunes of gypsum sand.
We entered the visitor center to learn about the history of the area, how the dunes were created, what made up these dunes, and the many things that live in the area. Now unlike most national parks I have visited, I didn't plan a hike to explore the area. This time I planned on doing something completely different. One of the popular activities to do is sledding on the soft white sand. Unlike sledding on snow, sand is not slippery and obviously not wet. We brought our own sled to use, though they can be purchased at the park’s gift shop. They also sell wax, which I recommend since it makes the sled slipperier to slide down the dune.
We entered the park to take Dunes Drive, luckily for us when we visited back in November it was Veteran’s Day, so admission was free to the park. Dunes Drive is an 8-mile scenic drive that leads from the visitor center to the heart of the sand dunes. Most of the drive is paved but the last few miles are on the gypsum sand road. Our first stop was the Interdune Boardwalk, which is about a 0.4-mile round-trip hike. The boardwalk is an elevated trail that is used for nature study. It is not recommended to use this area for sledding because of the vegetation.
We stopped at a few locations for sledding. There are many spots where you can pull your vehicle over and hike to a steep dune to sled on. One spot we stopped was the Sunset Stroll meeting area. It was quite an experience to sled down these dunes. When I was younger, I went to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, located in Colorado, I tried to slide down these dunes without a sled. Of course, I only ended up getting sand in my pants. So now older, hopefully wiser, and armed with a sled, I went down a dune a few times with no issues. On one dune some how I ended up turning backwards which caused me to fall off the sled as I got further down the dune and still ended up getting sand in my pants!
White Sands National Park offers a very different experience unlike any other national park I have visited. It also offers such strange views of sand and mountains in the distance.
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