Wow, we got two perfect weather days back-to-back for hiking in the sand dunes at White Sands National Park. We took advantage of this for a second day of fun. One thing we noticed on our drive into the park today was the snow that fell two and three days ago on Sierra Blanca is now melting.

After hiking the longest trail in the park and sledding yesterday, we were ready for the other trails. Our first stop was the two-mile Backcountry Camping Trail to see more expansive views and checkout where people with backcountry permits can set up tents for the night. This is where we figured out that the trails here in WSNP are marked with the four suits on playing cards. We thought the black diamonds on the longest trail was analogous to skiing where black is the hardest slope. I expected this one to be blue, and the others to be green, but here we have spades.

We ate lunch back in the parking lot and Catnip wanted to get outside for a bit. It was too busy with cars and people for her excursion to last long. She’s brave but only to a point. Tony wanted to video her, but she didn’t move much.

Our next trail was Dune Life Nature Trail. We drove back toward the entrance to the park, and we are doing these smaller trails all out of order. This trail is about one mile in length, and attempts to teach you about the critters to be found in the dunes. I say “attempt” because the signs are in terrible shape from the intense sunlight. Most are not legible, one was too high for me to see (drifting sands…) and some were almost completely sun-bleached.

From the nature trail, we walked across the park road to the Playa Trail. This showed a currently-dry shallow lake-bed up close and is a very short hike out to the signs explaining the lake or playa, which is now in the cool phase (Jan-Mar) and has a white fluffy crust. Water typically comes in late summer to fill the playa, though it would be just a foot or two below the surface right now. The signs also talked about the last ice age, when this was a cooler and wetter climate that supported large animals like Colombian Mammoths. Footprints occasionally get exposed of the mammoths, North American lions, Dire wolves and Western camels; these are proof they were once here.

Our last trail is the Interdune Boardwalk which is about 0.4-miles of elevated boardwalk with many interpretive signs to discuss the formation, geology, biology and ecological importance of this protected area. Gypsum is found in lots of things beyond the drywall in our homes. There is big business in mining it, and this park is not an open mine pit because of Alamogordo businessman Thomas Charles who wanted to see it became a national park. Thank you, Mr. Charles – this is a national (international) treasure! This is the biggest gypsum dune field in the world, and Mexico has the second largest one, Cuatrocienagas, under protection as well.

We walked to a mall about a mile from our campground to stretch our legs and get some pizza for supper. It had a nice mockup of the lunar lander to advertise the space history museum.