Alamogordo, New Mexico and White Sands National Park

White Sands National Park is one of our newer national parks, being changed from a national monument status to national park in 2019. It is an amazing formation of gypsum sands that seems to appear out of nowhere in the Tularosa Basin at the base of the San Andres Mountain range and the Sacramento Mountain range. It is exactly what the name applies and here was our experience in and around this amazing natural wonder.

We arrived to Alamogordo, New Mexico late at night and woke up to beautiful rocky mountains and formations all around us. We started our visit here with a trip to a local coffee shop (one of Madi's weaknesses!) to get work done. Madi was still in class so she needed internet to get on her one of the last Zoom lectures of the semester. Adam is working on a virtual yoga teacher training course this summer, so he also needed internet to get some of his asynchronous lectures done. This trip to Plateau Espresso was unlike any other coffee shop visit we've had. New Mexico has beautiful weather so we sat outside on the patio with our spread of camera equipment and computers and Acadia at our feet.

Long story short, we started chatting with two older ladies about travel and van life. We want to keep their stories private, but we related very well to them and the experiences they've had in their lives. The conversation ended with two amazing new connections, two gifted sleds to slide down the dunes with, and encouragement to continue our vanlife and travel experiences. It was similar to a campfire we had with an older traveling couple a few weeks ago when we were still living in the state park. Essentially the moral of the story was: continue travelling, experience what you can while you are physically and mentally young, worry about making money later because you really can't get experiences forever. We want to offer a big thank you to these two women for their encouragement and support. Our conversation meant a lot to us.

We took the 30 minute drive from Alamogordo to White Sands National Park after Madi's class was done. We were truly shocked when we pulled into the gates. It felt like ten feet of snow had just fallen over this one section in a mountain desert. The sand is pure white and dunes stretch for miles in all directions. And it got better the further back we went in the park. We hiked and sledded down the dunes for a few hours. The wind picked up pretty strong while we were there and we couldn't keep handling the sand pelting our legs and faces. It was the cheapest microdermabrasion therapy we could have found, even if it left our legs red and sore to the touch.

After exploring dune world for a few hours, we found a place in the park to relax in the van, cook dinner, and get a break from the incredibly high UV sun. Acadia was exhausted from chasing us up and down the dunes, which probably felt like mountains to her. She crashed and slept most of the early evening. We hopped back out of the van for sunset, even though the wind was stronger than the afternoon. We found the tallest dune we could, which also happened to be conveniently positioned right next to the picnic area we were parked in.

Acadia happily sat in Madi's arms, away from the blowing dune tops, for almost thirty minutes. It was another one of those magical moments; we actually watched the sun until it completely disappeared behind the mountains. We can hardly put into words what this felt and looked like, so take a look at some of the pictures Adam captured!

Our time in Alamogordo wrapped up back at Plateau Espresso because Madi had another series of Zoom lectures and meetings. Next stop - heading north toward Colorado!