Alamogordo, New Mexico and White Sands National Monument

We left Carlsbad, New Mexico and drove Route 82 to Alamogordo, New Mexico.  It was a mountain road with lots of elevation gain and then turns and 6% grade decent.  We arrived at the Alamogordo Elks Lodge and set up in one of their 30-amp sites for three nights.  This Elks had a nice RV Park area. 

That's us on the left.

 

 

 

One day we went to White Sands National Monument.  We first stopped off at the visitor’s center which was so busy.  We watched the park movie and worked on my Junior Ranger book.  Then we drove on the Dunes road and stopped off at one spot and walked out on the sand where there were a lot of plants growing in the sand.

 

 

That's not snow but sand!

Cool sand art created by the wind

 

 

Then we drove to the end of the road where we watched some kids sand sledding.  It looked like so much fun!  

Sand Sledding

Check out this guy!  Don't think they left much at home!

Then we did the 5 mile Alkali hike which was a fun walk on the sand dunes.

 

It was necessary to follow the trail markers.  Otherwise it was very easy to get lost once we got further and further away from the parking lot.

 

 

 

White Sands Missile Range is off in the far distance.

Danger, Unexploded munitions, keep out!  Uh, okay!

Some of the sand dunes were pretty steep!

What a fun park!  I loved all the sand dune formations and our hike. 

The next day we went to Pistachioland which was a zoo it was so busy.  We sampled some of their flavored pistachios, ate some ice cream, and took a photo of their large pistachio.  

Then we drove the short distance to Heart of the Desert where they had tastings of wine, pistachios, olive oils, and flavored vinegars.  

Pistachio tree

Pistachios on the tree

Then we stopped off at Del Taco (haven't seen one of those for a long time) for take out and filled up on diesel for $3.36/gallon.  Went in to the Elks Lodge for Cokes and popcorn and watched an old Green Bay vs. Rams game which we didn’t know if was old until Al knew the Rams quarterback had been traded. 😳   

We're almost back to Arizona which I'll cover in the next entry along with a wrap up of our east coast trip.  As always, thanks for following along.....