Travel - White Sands National Park and the City of Alamogordo

 After we arrived in Carlsbad, we learned that accessing the Caverns would be trickier than originally anticipated.  We succeeded, but that is a separate post and the adventure of the Caverns deserves to be told separately and in full, so instead, I will relate what we did in the meantime.

We went to Tatooine and had a lightsaber fight, of course.  What else would you do under the circumstances?

Okay, we went to White Sands National Park, which is about three hours west of Carlsbad by way of Artesia and Cloudcroft.  US 82, which runs between Artesia and Alamogordo, proved to be one of the unexpected delights of this trip.  As soon as it rises out of the scrub country into the mountains, the view changes from scrublands to surprisingly rich, well-forested farming country.  By the time it reaches Cloudcroft, it has transitioned still further into arboreal mountains.  In Cloudcroft itself, we found there was still snow on the ground.  The views are spectacular throughout - even if my kids chose mountain roads to ignore the views in favor of tablets, and then discover car-sickness instead.  Even in a relatively low-precipitation year, the region looks, feels, and smells green, in the way that alpine regions frequently do.

For lunch, we stopped at Big Daddy's Diner, on the east side of Cloudcroft.  When we arrived, we were one of three parties in the restaurant, and I observed at least two or three more come while we were there; given relatively sparse traffic on the road that day, I'd say that was a pretty good percentage stopping there.  What we ordered was pretty classic American, chicken fried steak, burgers, and so forth.  My wife ordered a chicken fried chicken sandwich where I swear they took the "chicken" part of it literally and fried the whole bird.  It smelled excellent coming out, and did not disappoint.  One of my secret food weaknesses is corn nuggets, and when that was available as a side, I leapt at them; they were hot fried balls of corn, so they were exactly what I expected, with the bonus that I could dip them in gravy for extra unhealthy goodness.  They used a batter for their chicken fried steak and I'm more used to breading, but I wouldn't refuse it, and the kids were full enough that they didn't quite eat all their fries.  There was a dessert menu but we were in no position to sample it by the time we were done eating.  I'd happily stop there again if I'm able to travel to that part of the country again.

From Cloudcroft we descended through Alamogordo to get to White Sands.  It is the only national park I've ever visited that has access shutdowns for missile tests - and I once worked at Fort Lee, which is home of the Ordnance Corps and is colocated with Petersburg National Battlefield Park.  This was not my first visit to White Sands; my wife and I went there on our way to a conference once.  However, it was the kids' first visit, and they had not been very enthusiastic about sitting in a car for three hours each way just to go look at sand.  Anakin Skywalker jokes were the theme of the day.

That changed, by stages, basically as the geography of the park changes.  Coming in from the road, it looks much like the surrounding well-rooted gypsum sands held in place by tufts of grass.  As you go deeper into the park, though, the grass becomes more and more sparse, until about the point of the playa access trail, which features interpretive signs explaining this side of the park, and then, shortly after the pavement runs out, the sand virtually disappears.  All surrounding is a pristine sea of white, interrupted only by picnic shelters and a smattering of visitors.  As the dunes revealed themselves, my children got more and more excited.  Even on a very crowded day, we were able to find a section of dune isolated from everyone else and stake it out for ourselves.

White Sands is also not like most NPS facilities I've visited in that, with very limited exceptions, it does not have a lot of trails, and no markers pleading for people to stay on the trails.  There are markers asking visitors not to walk on the grass, but in the dune area, where the dunes are constantly shifting, trails make little sense.  Thus, the kids ran up the dunes, slid down the dunes, and generally treated it as their own large, dry, gypsum-flavored beach.  Glare is a real problem, with the blinding white of the sand and the sun overhead.  We dealt with this in different ways: most by sunglasses, me by pulling up a stretch of dune, putting my hat over my eyes, and taking a nap.

When I awoke, it was getting on toward closing time, so we moved on to our next task of the day: Lightsaber fighting on Tatooine.  We had brought three SCA "swords" with us on the optimistic assumption that we'd have time to do slow work; here is where we justified bringing them.  We did ten minutes or so of slow work on top of the dunes, playing "tag," where the goal was not to let your opponent touch you with their sword.  Of course there were lightsaber noises.  Don't pretend you'd do any differently.

Lightsaber fighting on Tatooine, as promised.  NOT shown is that this is on top of a 40-foot dune.

 

White Sands, like other facilities, has COVID protocols in place.  I found theirs least satisfying: interior access to the facilities was closed entirely, leaving all lines directly exposed to sun, and, more annoying at this time of year, glare.  Additionally, it was unclear whether the gift shop was open for non-sled purposes, or just selling sleds.  Since I didn't want a sled, I didn't stay in line.  The family who all seemed to interpret "six feet apart" as "I can elbow you in the face" and who interpreted me giving them three inches more space as a reason to step six inches closer also contributed to this decision.

Of course, the visitors' center wasn't all bad.  The bees were out in force.  One or two bees is enough to make me smile, but I counted six or eight of them around the water fountain, and the splashing was enough to set them a little on edge.  I was wearing a dark-red shirt, a salt-crusted hat, and the dark hair and beard you see above; all of these are great ways of getting bees to get very personal with you, and the dark hair and beard have gotten me stung more often than is worth counting.  It's also been a while since I was stung by bees, so I was a little leery of refilling my water.  We managed without incident, though.

I had hoped to eat at a Mexican place in Alamogordo that we'd stopped at on our previous trip through, CJ's Si Senor.  Cheesy name, great food.  Unfortunately, just as it had been when we had first visited, it was packed full, and hungry children are rarely willing to wait for dinner even if they're in their forties, as I am, so we had ice cream instead.  Across the street from the Mexican restaurant was one of the three locations of a local chain, Caliche's Frozen Custard.  This is similar to such chains as Freddy's, though their flavor combinations are different (I had a key lime cheesecake caliche/blizzard/custard, which I've never seen elsewhere).  The person in front of us had issues with their order, so I had a great deal of time to watch their team at work.  I'm fairly certain this was a case of picky customer, because the only person I saw inside not busting their hump was someone very deliberately slicing onions, and even then she was diligent, just not comfortable with knives.  They had a good, hard-working team, they moved quickly, and they got us our order without difficulty or undue delay.  After a day dehydrating ourselves in the desert, it is unlikely we would have protested too much anyway, but the lime cheesecake caliche was very good, and their lemonade tasted like the real deal.  If you're looking for ice cream in Alamogordo, I know where I'd recommend.

With all that complete, we retraced our route and wound up back in Carlsbad for another night's rest.