As Ted and I were driving south on I-25 to visit our friends, Dave and Cheryl, guess what we passed.
It’s the Oscar Mayer wienermobile! Wouldn’t this be fun to drive? It would make everyone look and smile.
New Mexico has very Southwestern-styled rest stops. They are designed simply: a small building with men’s toilets on one half and women’s on the other, plus 6-8 picnic shelters, and rock landscaping with no grass to mow.
Most of the rest stops we’ve seen have been constructed of red adobe, but this one was more colorful. These are some of the picnic shelters.
We found Dave and Cheryl’s Las Cruces home without any problems and had a happy reunion with them. The four of us met on our 2015 Grand European Cruise and have stayed in touch ever since. Dave told us they take all their visitors to nearby White Sands National Monument, and that was a perfect plan for us, because we wanted to see it.
As we drove to the park, I noticed that the dirt in the ditches gave way to white sand in the ditches. Before long, we were at the park and saw white sand everywhere. Dave said the ridge road in the mountains to the east of White Sands provides a beautiful view of the white landscape from above. I hope we’ll have time to see that on our next visit.
In addition to sightseeing, we took time to play in the sand. Dave and Cheryl brought along their snow saucer, so Ted and I took some rides down a dune. Whee!
Here goes Ted . . .
. . . and here I come.
The sand dunes are constantly moving with the wind, so plants have found ways to survive the shifting of the dunes.
As the wind blows around the plant, it begins to dig a circle around the base. The plant adapts to the shifting dune by growing increasingly deeper roots.
When the dune has completely moved away from the plant, the deep roots help the plant survive for a period of time, but it eventually dies from a lack of water.
This plant has died, but you can see the remaining stump of its roots.
We drove the loop road around the park and stopped at a boardwalk, where we walked to the end for a view of the dunes.
When we got to the end of the boardwalk, the blue of the distant mountains reminded me of views on Lake Michigan beaches, with the blue of the mountains substituting for the blue of the lake water.
Just before leaving the park, we asked a fellow visitor to take a picture of the four of us.
In the evening, Dave and Cheryl took us for a walk in historic downtown Las Cruces and then we went out for dinner and spent the rest of the evening catching up with each other. There is less light pollution at Dave and Cheryl’s house than at ours, so we spent some pleasant time star-gazing and identifying constellations. Dave showed me how to recognize the Summer Triangle and the Northern Cross of stars, so that’s two more groups for me to look for the next time Ted and I see dark night skies.