This was surprisingly a nice stop. WhiteSands itself, is a quick visit, no more than a half day hiking around MASSIVE dunes of fine white gypsum sand. Talk about feeling so insignificant among those miles of dunes. Again, being me, I was totally into the life that managed to survive there. And really there is little diversity within the dunes themselves. Yucca, some desert grasses and sedge type grass. We saw no animals at all but that probably has to do with the fact that we went around 10 am and almost all animals there are nocturnal.
We did find Las Cruces to be an OK town. It is obviously older and dust worn, but had areas of vibrancy. However, they close almost all non- chain food down by 6 pm! We found some great Mexican food however, at a very authentic place called Enrique’s. We were the only ones speaking English and the other patrons all seemed to know each other. We also found the newer, much more affluent part of town where there were 5000 sq foot houses and golf courses. You know, the areas where all the Californians were moving in. It was interesting driving around.
We also found a wonderful museum on the New Mexico State University campus – The space history museum. White sands is also the national area where we test rockets and at one time, nuclear warheads. I’m sure it isn’t as good as something in Houston, but I really enjoyed the setup and the outside exhibits too. We did attempt to see the US Army’s museum of rocketry also, but it was closed. Probably due to the issues in the Ukraine and the fact that it is an active base. Apparently during rocket tests, they close down the freeway and WhiteSands NP for several hours. And this can be twice a week! It is pretty obvious in the town of Alamogordo that the military reigns supreme!
We hiked around Organ Mountain just outside of Las Cruces, and it was oK. Very rocky with a fair amount of loose rock areas which I do not like anyway. We hiked to the “Dripping springs” which was literally a slight run off of water down some rocks. There was also a sanitarium out there (for the treatment of TB early in the 20th century) but we stopped after that. Not an animal to be seen! It was a fairly strenuous hike and not all that rewarding. Coming back down we did see a man being helped off the trail by rangers, and being taken away by ambulance. Not the funnest of days!
We also hiked around the Franklin mountains outside of El Paso. These are a continuation of the Organ mountain range. This was very rocky (not my favorite type of ground cover!) and tended to be steep. We hiked to some caves, Apache Caves, and I thought I might die coming back down – almost a panic attack. Unfortunately, I did not follow my own advice. It was tough going up with HUGE rock steps and steep inclines with loose rock, but very hard for me to get down. I always go slow but there were a couple of places I couldn’t see a way for me to get down without falling. Luckily my hiking buddy stays calm (gets on me afterwards for sure) and we went extremely slowly down the trail. Obviously, I survived! We rewarded ourselves with El Paso BBQ for lunch!
And finally, we stayed at a state campground called Leasburg dam. It was touted as being on the Rio Grande but it turns out that it was a diversion dam from the river,and has only a small amount of water in it. The campground was weird- some sites had electricity but others did not (we did not). There were also sites with water- we did not have water. Our campground had only a pit toilet, which was very clean, but our campsite itself was gigantic. It had a shade shelter that held a good sized picnic table, and a sort of veranda or even a back yard! The rig was on one side of the shelter, and ‘Lil TG was on the other. Dave had a lot of fun figuring out how to take star photos there. We hiked around the site and down to the “river.” There were some fish in the river, maybe catfish, but other than doves, not much else. But it was a great base to venture from however. WhiteSands itself does not have a campground. Aguirre Park, in the Organ Mountains, has NO water or bathroom facilities. It had a lot of tent campers so I avoided wondering where they were going!
