White Sands… but No Ocean

This morning started off with a delicious New Mexican brunch (hellllllo huevos rancheros with Christmas – red and green chile- sauces). After yummy sustenance, we once again piled into our version of the family truckster – Rosalita the Jeep (loved the suggestion, Mark); and those who know her well may call her “Rosie”. Today’s big plan was to go to White Sands National Park in southern New Mexico, with our overnight stop being in Roswell, New Mexico. The drive down Interstate 25 is very much desert landscape, with lots of scrub land, hills and rocks, mesas, and swirling dust. It doesn’t have the same dramatic beauty of the red sandstone rocks with their multicolor layers like Utah and Arizona, but it is still beautiful, nonetheless. We even saw a roadrunner today!

On the Road

Our Roadside America app never disappoints, and among today’s finds we discovered the Bug/Alien House below, and the entire towns of Socorro and Truth or Consequences.

Check out this interesting architectural choice in Albuquerque:

Our app also gave us some interesting background info on the town of Socorro, NM that we went through on our route. This city calls itself “New Mexico’s Other UFO Landing Site”, lest they be eclipsed by Roswell. As the story goes, in 1964 a respected local police officer named Lonnie Zamora witnessed a shiny, egg-shaped craft and two small figures. The object, which made a loud roaring sound and emitted a blue and orange flame, left physical evidence (landing gear impressions and a burned brush). Investigated by Project Blue Book as an “unknown” case, it remains one of the most famous unsolved encounters. Locals placed rocks in the desert around the four areas where the “feet” of the craft touched down, which is all you can see of it now. Unfortunately the road into the desert landing site is reportedly in very bad shape so we didn’t attempt it, but it’s a cool story!

Here are some of our other Roadside America “finds” today:

Truth or Consequences

For background, in the 1950s there was a popular radio show called “Truth or Consequences” hosted by Ralph Edwards. He challenged his listeners to see if anyone was willing to change the name of their town to that of his radio show. Consequently, in the middle of the desert of NM right along the Rio Grande sits a tiny town formerly known as Hot Springs, that is now called Truth or Consequences (or “T or C”). The town actually does have a bunch of hot springs, which we were not inclined to visit given the current hot temps, but it was a neat stop. As a bonus, we couldn’t resist trying out the local beer in a place called Truth or Consequences Brewing. 😂

Around White Sands

White Sands, NM is a very remote town that houses primarily the military community involved with the White Sands Missle Range. In addition to missle and bomb testing the military has done out here, NASA has a testing center for rocket engines, so there is random space memorabilia all around. It is a strange and kind of eerie vibe out here.

White Sands National Park

While we had read some reviews of White Sands NP saying there “isn’t much to do”and “It’s just a bunch of sand dunes”, we found the park to be truly incredible. Aside from the fact that the park is actually geologically rare, we thought it was so beautiful and unique. This park contains the world’s largest gypsum dune field. If you are like me and read that going “Huh?”, I will translate it for you: the sand is SO SOFT! Regular desert/beach sand is generally made of quartz, and it is rougher and will stick to you and gets reallly hot in the sun. THIS sand is the bomb diggity of all sands- it stays cool, so no burning feet when you run across barefoot, even in the middle of the day, and it doesn’t stick to you. You can literally roll in it and it all brushes right off. I loved it. We made sand angels and tromped around the dunes and did a 15 second brush off and were fine to get back in the car- easy peasey. The gift shop here sells sleds so you can slide down the dunes. We have done that once before in Oregon, and had thought we’d do it here, too, but the shop closed early and we just missed them. We still had a great time checking out this incredible park. It was also cool that we could see the tracks in the sand of every critter that had walked, crawled or slithered by recently.