White Sands National Park

We had come to Lee Oliver S.P. principally because it is quite close to the White Sands National Park. Today we would visit the park. We had decided that the the best time to visit was early morning, when it is cooler, so we packed a picnic and set off.
After a brief stop at the Visitors Center, where we found out:

• The White Sands are Gypsum (calcium Sulphate), water soluble mineral, which is blown from several nearby lakes in the Tularosa Basin.
• The Tularosa Basin has no water outlet, so run off from the surrounding mountains gathers and evaporates. leaving gypsum crystals behind.
• Wind Action blows the gypsum crystals from the dry lakes and they gather in this one area.
• There is so much gypsum that the dunes cover an area of 270 Sq Miles and are up to 60 feet thick.
• Though transparent the wind action scratches the surface of the tiny crystals, giving them a white surface.
• Microbes and algae are able to establish themselves in the sheltered spaces between the dunes, which is the foundation for a complete ecosystem. Many of the plants and animals are unique to the White Sands, as they have lost colouration as a camouflage.
• Plants have a number of mechanisms to help them survive in the shifting dunes. e.g. the Yucca can grow faster than the dunes build up, so always have the growing part of the plant above the dune level.

Enough of this science talk. We wanted to get in there and see for ourselves.
The dune area is so big that a road takes you 6 miles to its center. On the way we stopped at a boardwalk which went out over one of the interdune areas and we could see many of the unique features of the dunes.
Driving on we reached the picnic area, here we found a number of other people enjoying the sand dunes. With a lot of effort you can climb the faces of the dunes. difficult because as soon as you step on to the dune the face collapses and starts a mini avalanche, also you immediately sink into the sand up to your ankles. Of course you could take the easy way and walk up the less steep Windward side of the dunes, but that would be too easy.
One of the reasons for people visiting the dunes is to sled down the steep face of the dune, using a poly sled, a bit like a large Frisbee, which you sit, lie, stand, kneel on and zoom down the dune.
We spent a couple of hours marvelling at the dunes, by this time the wind was starting to blow harder. The wind in this area is quite strange. In UK we expect wind to be associated with weather patterns, when we get a low pressure system we get wind. Not so here, Wind may happen at any time. It may last for a few minutes, or several days. The wind speed can often be above 20 m.p.h. We had noticed that though it is sunny and there are few trees at the campground nobody puts out their awning. This is because of the wind, which is so unpredictable and gusty. It is usually form the South West. This is of course why the sand dunes are there at all. However, we had heard that a strong wind was likely in the afternoon, which is why we visited in the morning.
Although we know about the wind we did not expect its effects (though in hindsight we should have realised)! As we were visiting the dunes and the wind increased in strength, sand began to blow. Strangely enough it wasn't sand grains close to us, so was not bothersome, but we could see white clouds blowing off the dunes further away. By the time we left the park these white clouds had started to obscure the scenery, after a while it became like a white fog, bringing visibility down to about a mile. Again we were not worried as we were now leaving the park. What we found though was that the sand blowing from the dunes created a fog right along the Tularosa Basin, which is 30 miles wide and hundreds (?) of miles long. It was quite a sight - except you could not see it.