When Kayle told me that we were overdue for a hiking trip, I immediately got her to commit to two that I had been planning in the back of my head. After knocking Mount Rainier off the bucket list, we hit up White Sands in New Mexico. I was drawn to the dunes because the color of the sand is pure white and with the endless dunes and the mountain backdrop, it just appealed to me.

We flew into El Paso, Texas and drove to Alamogordo where we would be staying. The first day we caught an amazing sunrise on our way to the park and we drove Dunes Drive through the park and hiked the Playa and Alkali trails. We were surprised to see so much vegetation surviving in the desert. The moon was so bright and even though it prevented stargazing, it was really cool to see it still going strong even as the sun came up. We bought some sleds in town and got to sled a few dunes which was really fun and made for some good laughs as I wiped out multiple times.

I knew the park didn’t have a lot to do, so I hoped we would get to ATV one day. All the rental options were far away and were guided tours, so while we were at the brewery I decided to ask our bartender if he knew of anyone willing to rent theirs to us. He came back with a local border patrol agent who was willing and his side by side was a beast! It rained all day (which is very rare for the area)  which made for some really good mudding and one hell of an adventure!

This trip was way more relaxed than our usual, but we both agreed it was nice not having a loaded schedule where we are hiking a lot of miles. It was still amazing, just in a different way. 🙂