Day: November 16, 2022

White Sands National Park

Gresh has New Mexico pretty well scoped out.   I was worried that after visiting with him at Tinfiny Ranch there wouldn’t be much left to do in the area, but boy, did I have that wrong.

“White Sands,” Joe said.  “We can do the missile museum and the National Park.  It’s really not sand, you know…it’s gypsum.”  I didn’t know that, but I do now.  I first visited White Sands 50 years ago, and on that visit, we took in the missile museum and the National Park on the same day, too.  It’s doable; they are not far apart.  White Sands National Park is about 15 miles south of Alamagordo on US Highway 70, and the missile museum is a few miles south of that.

I shot this photo of Joe Gresh on an RX3 in 2016 as we rode through the Gobi Desert. We were both rolling along at 70 mph; I was about 10 feet to his left on another RX3. The Gobi looks a lot like the Mojave.

White Sands National Park looks about like what I would imagine the Sahara Desert to be, although having never been in the Sahara Desert, I could be wrong.  I always thought the Gobi Desert would look like the Sahara, too, but when Gresh and I rode through the Gobi a few years ago on our ride across China, it looked like the Mojave here in California.  But not White Sands.  Nope, it looks like, well, white sand, even though (as Gresh said) it’s really gypsum.

The photo ops really are amazing in White Sands National Park. You can get by with a cell phone, but to me it would be a crime against nature to visit any US National Park without a good camera and a circular polarizer. I use a Nikon and it usually wears a 24-120 lens.
The sky, the clouds, the white sands…it’s all very impressive.
Folks walking the dunes in White Sands National Park. Many people bring sleds (of the circular pan variety) to slide down the dunes. You can rent them in White Sands National Park, too.

The ticket in is $25 per vehicle, but I have the lifetime senior citizen pass.  I was looking forward to using that pass, but when we went the entrance gate was unmanned (or unwomanned, or perhaps unpersoned, or whatever passes for politically correct these days) and we just rolled in.  It’s funny, I guess.  That’s what happened when Gresh and I led the CSC Motorcycles Western America Adventure Ride when we entered Yellowstone National  Park.  Gresh must be the national park admission fee good luck charm.

Gresh was really showing us a good time in the Alamogordo area, and we hit both the White Sands Missile Range Museum and the White Sands National Park on the same day.  From there, he took us to his favorite Italian restaurant in Alamogordo, but the day didn’t end there.  Our next stop was the New Mexico Space Museum.   Both WSMR and the New Mexico Space Museum are coming up in future blogs.  Stay tuned.

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