Cross Country Roadtrip - Day 5 Part 1 - White Sands National Monument

Cross Country Roadtrip - Day 5 Part 1 - White Sands National Monument - 04/22/10

Day 5 would see the start of the journey back east, but more on that in my next entry. On the way towards Midland, TX from Albuquerque, we scheduled a stop at White Sands National Monument - located on US 70 just southwest of Alamogordo. I'm beginning to think I have this attraction to sand dunes as this is the third sand dune oriented park I have been to. (Jockey's Ridge State Park along North Carolina's Outer Banks and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore in Michigan.)

White Sands National Monument was strikingly different. The first reason is obvious, the white sand. But the second difference is at White Sands you really are surrounded by what seems to be endless sand dunes.

I have some of my favorite shots from White Sands below. The entire set (88 photos) are located on flickr.

One of the first stops is the Dune Life Trail. The one mile loop trail is well marked and it is really the first opportunity to walk on the sand. It is an interpretive trail with many markers explaining details about the dune's habitat along the way.

A single tree - White Sands National Monument

After the mile or so hike - it did seem longer - it was back onto Dunes Drive. Dunes Drive leads to the heart of the sand dunes. After awhile, the pavement ends and you are driving on what pretty much is compacted sand and gypsum.

The road looks like this!

Dunes Drive - White Sands National Monument

From there there are many stops for you to explore the sand dunes including the Alkali Flat Trail. When hiking the Alkaki Flat Trail, individuals are required to sign in and sign out. This is because of the extreme conditions - sand storms, low visibility and heat - can leave a hiker stranded.

One of the amazing things about being on the dunes is that you have a top of the world, last man standing feeling. Though others are nearby, you can have a rather comforting feeling of isolation on the dunes. It is quite an experience.

The white dunes also put on a show. Depending on the amount of clouds, the dunes can be a blinding white or a soft off-white. With variable cloud cover, the colors of the dunes dance with the passing clouds.

Rolling sand dunes - White Sands National Monument

From here it was back into Alamogordo for lunch and then east onto US 82 for an amazing drive.

Comments

Paper Highways: The Unbuilt New Orleans Bypass (Proposed I-410)

There are many examples around the United States of proposed freeway corridors in urban areas that never saw the light of day for one reason or another. They all fall somewhere in between the little-known and the infamous and from the mundane to the spectacular. One of the more obscure and interesting examples of such a project is the short-lived idea to construct a southern beltway for the New Orleans metropolitan area in the 1960s and 70s. Greater New Orleans and its surrounding area grew rapidly in the years after World War II, as suburban sprawl encroached on the historically rural downriver parishes around the city. In response to the development of the region’s Westbank and the emergence of communities in St. Charles and St. John the Baptist Parishes as viable suburban communities during this period, regional planners began to consider concepts for new infrastructure projects to serve this growing population. The idea for a circular freeway around the southern perimeter of t

Hernando de Soto Bridge (Memphis, TN)

The newest of the bridges that span the lower Mississippi River at Memphis, the Hernando de Soto Bridge was completed in 1973 and carries Interstate 40 between downtown Memphis and West Memphis, AR. The bridge’s signature M-shaped superstructure makes it an instantly recognizable landmark in the city and one of the most visually unique bridges on the Mississippi River. As early as 1953, Memphis city planners recommended the construction of a second highway bridge across the Mississippi River to connect the city with West Memphis, AR. The Memphis & Arkansas Bridge had been completed only four years earlier a couple miles downriver from downtown, however it was expected that long-term growth in the metro area would warrant the construction of an additional bridge, the fourth crossing of the Mississippi River to be built at Memphis, in the not-too-distant future. Unlike the previous three Mississippi River bridges to be built the city, the location chosen for this bridge was about two

Memphis & Arkansas Bridge (Memphis, TN)

Like the expansion of the railroads the previous century, the modernization of the country’s highway infrastructure in the early and mid 20th Century required the construction of new landmark bridges along the lower Mississippi River (and nation-wide for that matter) that would facilitate the expected growth in overall traffic demand in ensuing decades. While this new movement had been anticipated to some extent in the Memphis area with the design of the Harahan Bridge, neither it nor its neighbor the older Frisco Bridge were capable of accommodating the sharp rise in the popularity and demand of the automobile as a mode of cross-river transportation during the Great Depression. As was the case 30 years prior, the solution in the 1940s was to construct a new bridge in the same general location as its predecessors, only this time the bridge would be the first built exclusively for vehicle traffic. This bridge, the Memphis & Arkansas Bridge, was completed in 1949 and was the third

Gribblenation

Search This Blog