White Castles or White Sands
Today was another driving day, trying to get ahead of the weather. Along the way, we did one side quest: visiting White Sands National Park. We visited White Sands about a year ago when we drove the EKKO back from its upfitting. It was so much fun we decided to return.
One of our favorite apps when we are driving is Guide Along. It’s a narrated guide that uses GPS coordinates and your phone to give a guided driving tour. We call the narrator Guy Dalong, although the voice actor’s real name is Dave. The script is funny and gives background stories about the area. They have a bunch of tours, especially in the National Parks. Usually he sends us to some locations that we didn't plan to visit. It’s like having a tour guide in your car.
They are constantly adding new locations, and they added White Sands since our last visit. This tour was a bit confusing, though it isn’t really the fault of Guide Along. See, White Sands NP is next to the White Sands Missile Range. Because of this, the US Government often scrambles GPS signals. They tell you not to count on your GPS, except that Guide Along’s totally depends on GPS to play the stories automatically at the right location. You can click on the individual stories, but we missed quite a few. We did learn that the sand is white because of Gypsum instead of the usual Silica in sand, that roadrunners eat all sorts of bugs, and a lot of people died while looking for gold. It just wasn’t as seamless as we like. So, while we are big fans of Guide Along, we can't recommend it for White Sands.
Oh and the title of this post was a joke that Guy said at the beginning of the tour.
We did hike the Alkali Flats trail, which is just going up and down the sand dunes while following poles to make sure you don’t get lost. It’s easy to get lost because there are few visual cues and the GPS is unreliable. They encourage taking sleds down the dunes, and the gift shop even sells sleds. We didn’t have time this visit.
The National Park Service made us take our trailer out to the sand dunes
After we left White Sands we went to the nearest EV charger, in Alamogordo. Alamogordo was a sad town with a lot of pot shops and signs for addiction recovery services. Just beyond it was PistachioLand, with the words largest Pistachio. Unfortunately we were running behind and didn’t have the time to check it out.
We made a campground reservation outside of the town of Carlsbad, NM, though we are nearby in rural West Texas. The owner of the campground came by with a big Stetson hat, big belt buckle, and a drawl. Greg made sure to greet him with "Howdy". We are spending a few days sightseeing in the area before freezing temperatures arrive.