White Sands National Monument, NM, is unique because the “sands” are actually not really sand, but gypsum, the stuff they make drywall out of. It is the whitest white you can imagine and amazingly soft on your feet, but not powdery. In fact, they encourage barefoot hiking! You can also use inner tubes or sleds to slide down the dunes. In addition, the sand is constantly blowing and moving. You can drive right through the dunes on a paved road from a visitor center to several picnic areas. They have a snowplow and front-end loader stationed along the road to remove the white sand as it piles up! Also, because the sands move, it is interesting to see the yucca plants which have 10’ stalks because they grew taller and taller as the sand piled up around them and then when it blew away were left lying on the ground because they were unable to support themselves, but still were alive.
As a negative, the white sands are located in the middle of a missile test site, and the park, as well as the road in and out, is sometimes closed due to military testing. In addition, because of the military nature of the area, there are no campgrounds nearby, and you have to drive maybe 25 miles to the nearest town. The day I was there, the place was pretty deserted. However, the white sands are amazing and beautiful, and I would like to go back someday to do the barefoot hiking.
Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, CO, is also unique. It is at 8,000 feet and the dunes seem to come out of the nearby snow-capped mountains behind them. The sand is real quartz sand and has a considerable amount of magnetite in it, which you can pick out with a magnet. You drive to a visitor center and then take a road to a parking lot where you can access the dunes. There is a very wide, shallow river between the parking lot and the dunes, so you need to take off your shoes to wade across and then put them back on again to walk the 400’ or so through coarse sand and rocks to the actual dunes, where you can take your shoes off again and climb up to the top if you are energetic enough or just climb one of the shorter dune hills. You can use sleds or tubes on these dunes to slide down if you want to, just as you can in White Sands. These dunes are surrounded by two shallow rivers and are damp if you dig down just a few inches, so they do now blow or move.
Many people just go for the day to lounge around the shallow river, which was amazingly warm even though it is melted snow. At the deepest it is maybe 6” so kids and people just lay in it or bring chairs and dangle their feet in the river. There is also a very scenic nearby (maybe a mile) no-hookups campground. I chose to stay in San Luis State Park which is about 13 miles away because it has electric and water hydrants and dump station, but no activities or shade because it is in the desert, while the national park campground does have some trees. There are also several hiking trails through the various areas of the park, which is situated right against the mountains. While I enjoyed my few hours here, I probably will not go back for a while.
