Looking north from US 70 at what seems to be fog on the horizon. This is actually just the everyday billowing of white sand up from the characteristic dunes.


The scenery remains relatively standard New Mexico fare to the south, where the sands don't reach. Twice a week, you can't reach here either, because US 70 is closed for flyovers of new or prototype armed forces equipment. (The closures don't last too long.) The National Monument is next to an eponymous Missile Range, and some of the U.S.'s nuclear test sites were in this very desert.


All of a sudden, there are white sand dunes along the north side of the road, overlapping the desert brush like hot glaciers.


It's so hard to tell which direction one is facing when the only color is white in all directions that all I can do is tell you that photos progress around the White Sands Scenic Drive, which is to say, counterclockwise in the sand. It's definitely worth the price of admission to drive out into blinding nothingness and stand on top of it.


Heading into the dunes on the only road. Once you're out here, the "sand storm" just becomes an ambient white haze.


Suddenly, the road disappears, and you're driving on white gypsum sand. To the left and right, white sand. Rising on all sides, white sand. Sunglasses are mandatory, and even with them, it's easy to go sand-blind if you drive more than a couple of minutes at a time.


Clues help you keep on the road even when winds drift sand in your way. The local plant life is supplemented by the occasional action of the National Park Service to plow the sand into drifts. It's really just like snow, except much hotter and drier, and don't forget the snakes.


Scenes on the left side of the road, which I optimistically call "west." The White Sands are in the Tularosa Basin, which has no rivers because of the aridity (10 inches of rain a year). Therefore, whenever it does rain, especially in the mountains where such a thing is possible, the water runs down, collecting minerals, pools here, and then evaporates. Apparently those Mountains (San Andres) are full of gypsum, which is white, so the sands are white as well.


I'm on top of a dune. Which way is north? There's plenty of parking for camping, but I can't see why anyone would want to camp here and end up burried in the morning. The mountains in the first photo are roughly east, and those in the third and fourth photos are roughly west.


Progressing around the top of the loop. Despite conditions preciously close to Saharan, bits of life manage to cling to the scenery.


Looking down from the top of another dune. These are the mountains to the west, and the touch of color to the left of the last photo is the berm of the Scenic Drive. Not that that would give me any idea which way I'm facing.


There's a nature boardwalk shortly north of the visitor center that lets you examine the narrow variety of desert plant life, and pretends to give you a chance to see animals, as if they'd ever come out for visitors. What animals do exist can only get water from the plants and other animals they eat, because there's pretty much none to be found anywhere else. (If it ever rains, those plants can get awfully greedy.) In fact, the smallest mice and rats get their water entirely from digesting dry seeds - in storing the energy from the seeds, their cells undertake dehydration synthesis, which releases just enough water to get by. I can tell you more about what looks like a witch's bad hair day or a malicious tumbleweed in the second photo; it's actually hoary rosemarymint. As far as "hoary" goes, I'd say this nails it. This redefines hoary. However, "rosemarymint" isn't quite right because this is a mint but not a rosemary (but smells like rosemary in the fall, apparently). Its survival strategy is to grow upward faster than the dune can. If a dune moves on, the mint's roots hold onto enough of the sand to keep it in place, though I don't know what benefit that has as opposed to dropping down several feet into more sand. High sand or low sand, those roots aren't going to be finding any nutrition.


Views along a guided tour trail near the park entrance, where a bit of sandstone peeks through the sand. Is this all a sham? Is this just a thin layer of sand spread over a sandstone landscape to make visitors think it's much more mysterious and magical than it really is? No.


This is a cottonwood tree. It likes water. This is a desert. Deserts don't have water. Well, turns out that the tree is able to dig just deep enough to pick up just enough water to survive, but gets buried to its earlobes in sand in the process. Each year is a fight to get enough water to grow tall enough to outpace the march of sand.


Speaking of sandstone, it's sedimentary, so there are stages between loose sand and bound rock. Find the right place and you can leave your mark alongside dozens of other visitors. Sure, it will blow away, but this website (hopefully) never will.

Continue west on US 70 to Organ Mountains
Continue east on US 70 to Tularosa Valley

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