Last week Emily and I took a trip out West to see a few more National Parks. Today I’ll focus on the two we visited in the state of New Mexico and tomorrow I’ll review Guadalupe Mountains National Park in TX.
When we arrived in El Paso last week, we immediately got into our rental car and drove north to White Sands National Park. This National Park is unlike any other I’ve experienced. Once you drive several miles (some of those paved and many driving over sand) into the park, it is like you are on the moon or something. I described it as an endless sandbox with a Bob Ross backdrop.
I don’t think it would require days here to explore…a few hours is probably enough because though it is beautiful and amazing, I think the views will all be quite similar. However, for the few hours, it is incredible. It wasn’t crowded and though we saw other people, they were many hundreds of yards away and there was complete silence.
The highlight of White Sands is that you can bring (or rent from the gift shop) a sled and sled wax and go sledding down the sand dunes. It’s an absolute blast and we had a great time!
We also visited Carlsbad Caverns National Park on the opposite side of New Mexico. This was unbelievable! We have been to caverns before….but nothing like this. First off, you need to reserve a spot to hike the caverns as they do limit the amount of people. You can go online and reserve a time slot for $1. Last slot is at 1:15pm and you have to enter the caverns by 2:30pm and be out by 4pm.
Emily and I got there with plenty of time and opted to hike the entire thing though there is an option to take the elevator down and just walk the mostly flat 1.2 mile loop. We opted to start outside the cavern entrance and walk down 80 stories! This does add an additional mile+ to the walk/hike for anyone doing it.
The walk down from the entrance was so secluded as most apparently don’t go this way. We had almost the entire hike downwards to ourselves. It was amazing, beautiful, and somewhat creepy as well as daylight disappeared.
The massiveness of the caverns was a thing to behold as well as the massive rock formations (the smaller ones were also incredible).
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