After Roswell, we kept moving west. The next place we decided to stop was White Sands National Monument. It so happened to be somewhat close to the largest collection of petroglyphs, so we made a two night stop in the middle of the two places and did the both.
First off, our campground was awesome. Getting to it from the main road was a bit iffy, but once there we had a quiet place, mountain views, and bright stars. All for $16 a night!
We made the trek to White Sands National Monument. Our preliminary research showed that it was a place to sled, so we borrowed a few from the campground and headed there. White Sands is gypsum sand, unlike most beaches which are silica. The gypsum sand stays cool to the touch, unlike regular beaches. We visited on a sunny, 90-degree day and the sand actually felt cool – especially digging a few inches deep. Sledding didn’t work as well as we hoped, but we had a bunch of fun nonetheless. It was otherwordly being there. It looked like snow mounds, but it was pure white sand. Truly white, not like a “white sand beach”. Pretty amazing. Visit if you can!
To cap off our trip to the area, we visited the Three Rivers Petroglyphs. It’s the largest collection of petroglyphs in the southwest with 20,000+ drawings in a concentrated area. It was pretty amazing. Just about every rock had some sort of drawing. The variation of quality and intricacy of the drawings made it fun to find the best and worst. The hike up the mountain was probably more fun than the rock drawings – and both were super fun!
Near our campground was the World’s Largest Pistachio. Adelaide needed to stop and take a picture…especially after seeing the World’s Tallest Squirrel statue in Austin, Texas.
