January 5

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The following day (1-5) was by far the most difficult I’ve had since my Christmas break. It was long (about 82 miles) and I had a pretty big climb out of Las Cruces over the Organ Mountains (San Agustin Pass). I was sweating in just a T-shirt on the way up the pass, then I nearly froze my butt off going down the other side, even with my jacket and gloves on. Once I got to the bottom, however, it wasn’t nearly so cold, and I had a basically flat highway all the way to Alamogordo through the Tularosa Valley.

Most of the valley is the White Sands Missile Range, and about twice each week U.S. Route 70 is closed for an hour or two while testing takes place. I went by a large sign on the way up the pass that ordered motorists to stop if its lights were flashing. The lights were not flashing, so I proceeded up the mountain, but I did wonder just how long they wait for traffic to “clear” the area once they turn on the lights. Do they just assume that the slowest truck will be out of harms way in, say, a half-hour? I rode on, but with a plan that I would ride naked, so as to stay cool, if I didn’t see any other vehicles for a stretch longer than 15 minutes. You never know, the Air Force might just have felt an urge to test some of those heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles today.

The highlight of the day was a visit to White Sands National Monument, probably one of America’s best known and most visited National Monuments. It’s surrounded by the missile range, and gets “shut down” a couple of times each week also, but fortunately not while I was there.

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Here lies the world’s largest gypsum sand dune field – engulfing over 275 square miles of desert in the Tularosa Basin. The brilliant white dunes are ever changing. Powered by southwestern winds, they grow, crest, then slump, but always advance, covering nearly everything in their paths. Some vegetation occurs among the dunes, but only those few species that grow rapidly enough to avoid burial by the moving dunes – kind of like the quick and the dead. Some wildlife also lives among the sand dunes – rodents, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, porcupines, lizards, beetles and birds among them. There are even a few species – a pocket mouse, two types of lizards, and several types of insects – that have evolved a white coloration to blend with the sands and enhance their own survival among predators.

It is the gypsum that gives the dunes their white color. This gypsum was deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea about 250 million years ago, then the area was uplifted into a giant dome as the Rocky Mountains formed about 70 million years ago. Finally, about 10 million years ago, the center of the dome collapsed and formed the Tularosa Basin, leaving its rim in the form of the San Andres Mountains (to the west) and the Sacramento Mountains (to the east). Dunes began to form when dissolved gypsum washed down from the mountains and settled in a low point in the basin now called Lake Lucero. The “lake” is usually dry, but in wet periods slowly evaporating water causes gypsum to be deposited in a crystalline form called selenite. Then the forces of nature (freezing and thawing, wetting and drying) break down the crystals into sand-sized particles, light enough to be blown by the wind. Over and over, millennium after millennium, new grains of sand are formed in this way and begin their relentless march across the desert.

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There is just one road into the White Sands National Monument, the Dunes Drive, which goes eight miles from the Visitor Center to a place called “Heart of the Sands” where the dunes cover everything. It looks just like Minnesota in mid-winter – white stuff everywhere. The road at the far end is just packed-down sand, and it’s quite obvious that NPS workers spend considerable time plowing the road and the parking lots. I’m sure that in mid-summer (when it’s 100 degrees) the effect is different, but on a cold winter day such as today, it’s real easy to believe you’re riding on and looking at snow.

Overall, I really liked this place – it’s very beautiful and very photogenic. Some of my other favorite photos (see bicyclist at left).

I passed by Holloman Air Force Base between White Sands National Monument and Alamagordo. It was probably “just another” Air Force Base for many years, but now is home to the Stealth F117A aircraft, the so-called “invisible” fighter plane, and one of the most advanced (and secret) weapons in the U.S. arsenal. I saw several flying around the desert while at White Sands, then took a photo of two at the end of the runway as I rode by the base. I could see them pretty well, but I’m told it takes a very high level of optical illusionary perception skill to pick them out of the background in a photograph.

G.A.S.P.

(Great Adventures to Scenic Places)