White Sands National Park in New Mexico.
Who would have thought that a bunch of sand in the desert
would be SO AWESOME!!! If you go there, you have to hike in.

Click on any photo to see the larger image.

As you come into the park there is still desert vegetation around.	Slowly the sand does take over and the plants thin out a lot.
If you click the photo you see a car in the picture and footprints on the dunes to the right of the car.	I decided to go out on the hiking trail. As you can see, the wind blows the dunes around big time.
1 of 2 panorama shots.	2 of 2 panorama shots.
Walking around, I saw piles of rocks around here and there. Finally, a sign!	Way out toward the halfway point of the trail there was a sign explaining the rocks and the ants I was seeing. I wondered how ants could live out here and got the answers here. Interesting, and I even saw a spider on the sand near some bushes.
A close up shows ants (top center) and a hole into the sand.	Even closer, you can see a hole in the sand again with a few ants.
Vegetation gets more sparse...	until all you see around is sand.
Way out on the edge of the dunes you come to the military base.	Off in the distance there are many buildings for the test range.

As I got to the edge of the dunes I took the picture above and the picture at the top of the page. Despite the thunder over the mountain in the distance, the area around me was dry and not too hot (95 degrees).
Here I am next to yet another buried trail sign.




Out at the halfway point you come to the edge of the dune field. The sign posts continue straight to the bush on the middle right. Then the trail turns 90 degrees to the left. On the larger photo you can see the sign posts that form the trail, including the one that shows the way for the trail as it goes off on the left side of the photo.

I also have a very large version of the above photo linked here.




On the way back there are a few large towers of sand. The vegetation keeps the sand stacked up against the wind. This is the largest one I saw. It is probably about 60 to 75 feet tall.

Please do not use any image on this page without my permission.