Home Is Where You Park It!: White Sands National Monument July 15

We took advantage of a cool cloudy day to visit White Sands National Monument just west of Alamogordo today. 275 square miles of sparkling gypsum sand dunes that looks like snow, I've visited this area many times, but I never tire of seeing it again and again. There's always something new to see and learn. The monument opened April 29, 1934 with visitor center, restrooms and residences for park employees constructed by WPA and completed in 1938.

The dunes have their origin in the southwest corner of the Monument. During the last Ice Age, rain carried dissolved gypsum and salt from the San Andreas Mountains and the Sacramento Mountains into the Tularosa Basin where it settled in the area known as Lake Lucero covering 1600 square miles. As the climate became dryer, the lake evaporated into the Alkali Flat leaving behind crystallized gypsum called selenite. The crystals are broken down through weathering and the wind picks up the grains to deposit them onto the dunes. The lake still fills with some water after a heavy rain, but it is greatly reduced in size, covering only 10 square miles.

Once a month ranger led tours to Lake Lucero are provided. The Lake is named for an early ranching family and evidence of the ranch is still visible. The area just to the west of the monument is the White Sands Missile Range, created in 1942.

Towering dunes and

Interdunal vegetated areas

The Dunes Drive Road being plowed like snowy boulevards

The picnic shelters looking like sailboats on a white sea or prairie schooners plying the desert

The Sands are far from lifeless...

Interdunal areas provide wildlife shelter and seed

This Bleached Earless Lizard was waiting to ambush the ants just on the other side of the vegetation. If he had been on the sand, I may not have seen him.

Families enjoyed the taller dunes for sledding, minus the cold finders and toes.

San Andreas Mountains are visible beyond the dunes.

Wind caused erosion reveals the stabilizing roots of desert plants.

Life and death in the dunes... reminds me of the old Disney Wildlife films, "The Living - fill in the blank".

Bleached Earless Lizard raced up the dune to nip this walking stick...

The walking stick slid down the dune but the lizard didn't pursue him.

The walking stick got to his feet...

then rolled onto his back with all six legs up.

The lizard ran off to the top of the dune. Did the walking stick taste bad?

Cloud cover had burned off by this time, so we headed to Alamogordo for ice cream with a stop by Holloman Lakes where we discovered this juvenile hawk.