Stop 7: White Sands National Park

And here we are, the 7th national park of the trip and the 2nd set of sand dunes! White Sands National Park, baby. After camping by the toxic lake, we woke up and headed over to the dunes. Remember how in my last post I said that the water was toxic because of a nearby military base?? TURNS OUT, the whole fucking area is militarized lmao. White Sands is still an active missile testing range and they will randomly close the park on days where they are doing missile tests. The fuck.

After we left the park we drove over to Las Cruces, NM which was like 45 min and the ENTIRE duration of the drive was all active missile testing areas (not while we were there, thank god). The signs were all apocalyptic as fuck. I also read that the sand is still radioactive from nuclear weapon testing during WWII, but the radioactivity levels are low enough that it's safe to be in/on? Seemed a little sketch but whatever.

While I'm on the roll of sharing all of my fun facts about this place, J and I also learned that the sand isn't actually even sand. WHAAAA?? It's crushed up gypsum (which is why it's white) and it's worth like tons of money. The more you know, huh?

White Sands was cool, but there's really not a lot to do there other than look at it for awhile. After we were through looking around, we went to Las Cruces. Why did we go to Las Cruces you ask? Oh, because one of our tow drivers (from the van situation) told us that it was his favorite city he'd ever been to. Then he told us he had six months to live and his sons wife left him for a girl. It was a weird conversation. Anyways, we happened to be there on a Saturday morning so there was a little farmers market goin on downtown which was just perfect! Bought a couple things and had some bomb ass food truck tacos. Solid recommendation, tow guy.

After leaving Las Cruces, we left for Tucson, AZ. As we were driving, we passed through a border patrol checkpoint and then immediately entered a 100+ acre orchard of hatch green chiles. We thought the border patrol was there to protect the chile trees but after a bit of googling, it turned out I was wrong. There was a mansion on the chile orchard that had to belong to none other than the Hatch Green Chile King, whomever that may be. If none of this paragraph made any sense to you, just move on.

Also Radiator Springs (from the cult classic, Cars) was based on Tucumcari, NM which we drove right past. Remember the traffic cone shaped motel?? Its a real place!!! We missed it, but it's added to a list of places to visit in the future.

After a very eventful drive, we made it to our campsite outside of Tucson. It was BEAUTIFUL and seriously one of the best sunsets I've ever seen AND the first campsite we'd been to that wasn't 15 degrees at night, which was sick.

It was also an active shooting range and it sounded like a firing squad was outside of our tent when we woke up. I'm still learning how to find good campsites.

Solid day, folks. Solid day.

Talk soon babes,

Drew