We left the BLM land and headed towards White Sands National Monument, trying to stay off the interstates.  However, our GPS had us turning every half mile, and was directing us towards some pretty sketchy roads, so we decided to just get on I-25 and head towards Las Cruces.  That turned out to be a good decision, because not only is I-25 relatively lightly traveled which made the driving easy, but it got us to White Sands in time to drive through the park and take a hike that day, rather than finding a camping place to spend the night before touring the park the next day, when a wind storm was predicted.  

White Sands is terribly beautiful.  The park is aptly named, and all you can see is miles of white sand dunes in every direction to the base of the mountains.  We drove to the end of the park road and got out with the dogs to take a hike through the dunes.  White Sands is different from other parks we’ve visited because park visitors can do whatever they want, go wherever they want, and dogs are welcome as long as their owners clean up after them.  We saw people trying to sled down the dunes on flying saucers purchased in the gift shops, and they can do it wherever they want.  We’d talked about getting a saucer and trying it, but decided not to because we didn’t want to fill our clothes with sand.  When we saw people doing it, we were happy with our decision because it didn’t really look like that much fun and the saucers moved very slowly through the sand.  People were walking all over, and it doesn’t really matter because no matter what they do or where they go, the wind will erase any evidence of their passage within a few hours.  We took the dogs on a five mile loop trail, but after a mile and a half of climbing up and down dunes, we turned back.  We used the dogs as an excuse, but I was pretty ready to turn around and stop trudging through the sand.  It’s like the beach without the ocean, and most of the reason I consider myself a woods person rather than a beach person is because I don’t like the sand, so the sand without the water isn’t much fun for me.  But, it is incredibly beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

After playing in the sand, we drove about five miles from the White Sands entrance to a free boondocking campground we’d found on iOverlander and FreeRoam.  It’s on the grounds of the Holloman AFB, and the campsites are around the “lake,” which is actually a wastewater evaporation pond.  This means it’s very pretty, but you shouldn’t touch the water, which was fine for us. A lot of campers were there, some obviously overnighting like us, but also some who looked like they were set up for an extended stay.  Despite the lack of management, it was very clean, and everybody we encountered was very friendly.  And, as advertised, the sunset was stunning.

With the windstorm predicted for the next day, we didn’t make any plans that night.  In the morning, the wind hadn’t started yet, so we looked at the map and booked a campground near the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument so we could get there and get to the park the next day.  However, by the time we took the dogs for a short walk and got on the road, the wind had started.  As we came through the Organ Mountain pass on US70 just east of Las Cruces, the wind hit us like a truck, and we looked ahead into a dust storm.  Tom wisely took the next exit off the highway and found a parking lot, just before our phones buzzed with the dust storm warning.

We’re still sitting in the parking lot, three hours later.  Most of the dust seems to have passed, but the wind is still rocking and rolling the camper.  Maybe we’ll make it to the campground tonight, and maybe we won’t, but in any case we’re safe in our camper and not being blown off an overpass or hit by an out of control truck.

This video is before the dust storm really hit, but you can hear the wind.

We spent a day longer than planned in Albuquerque because when we went out of the camper on Thursday, we noticed an icicle hanging off the back corner under the water heater and pressure tank.  We’d noticed water dripping from that area before, but we’d never had the chance to trace where it came from by following the ice trail.  The diagnosis was that it was the plastic fittings going into the water heater, and the evidence that this was not a new problem was in the rusted fittings.  Since Todd and Tatiana live just a block from a Home Depot, and we were parked in their paved driveway, and we had Todd’s camper van expertise to help, we decided that rather than hit the road we would fix the leak.  The leak was fixed by early afternoon, but since we wouldn’t have enough time to get anywhere if we left that late, we decided to get our grocery shopping done, fill our propane tank, take a walk along the river, and have one more meal with Todd and Tatiana. 

Friday morning, we didn’t have any distractions and were up and out early, heading south towards the Salinas Missions National Monument.  We took the back roads, so on the way I pulled out All Trails to look for a hike.  We were in Cibola National Forest, and the trailhead for a ~5-mile loop hike up a mountain was just a few miles in front of us.  We easily found the trailhead parking lot, and set out on the trail for a beautiful hike to the top of a mountain.  As we climbed, we found places that were still snow covered, and we had to squish through a lot of muddy patches, but overall it was a relatively easy hike with lots of beautiful vistas.  Princha got used to the snow, and we returned to the camper in time for a cheese and crackers lunch before heading south.

After cleaning some of the mud off the dogs and eating lunch, we headed south towards the Salinas Missions National Monument.  This park is another one of those spread out at various sites over many miles, and we decided to go to the Quarai site, which is an old mission which was abandoned before it even had much use because the crown and the church couldn’t agree on who the Native Americans should work for, and whether they should be saved or taxed. Whatever the history, it was interesting to walk through the ruin and around the grounds.

When we left the Quarai site, we looked for a place to stay for the night so we could go to the Abo site in the morning.  However, the closest camping we could find was on BLM land about 60 miles away, so we bypassed the Abo ruins and headed towards Soccoro towards a spot we’d found documented on both iOverlander and FreeRoam.  It was our first campsite on BLM land, and it was beautiful.  We followed another overlander van onto the BLM land, and he picked a site near the top of the hill, so we kept going and found a perfectly level and perfectly quiet spot in another mile.  We considered going another mile or so towards the canyon to get away from the highway, but decided it wasn’t worth it for one night.  Due to the hill, we couldn’t even hear the highway, even though it was probably less than 2 miles away.  

After a quiet night, we pulled out in the morning and headed towards White Sands National Monument.

We found Todd and Tatiana’s house at the edge of the city and managed to squeeze our camper into their driveway next to their camper van.  Our original plan - once we planned to go to Albuquerque - was to stay there for a couple of days before heading towards White Sands. On Monday, it looked like the plan would work as we had a good visit and Todd took us to the Petroglyph National Monument, which is within walking distance of their house. But, the weather kicked in again and we ended up delaying our departure until Thursday due to high winds and white-out conditions. But, just as we were glad of the ice storm in Texas for more time to visit with them, we have thoroughly enjoyed our time visiting with them at their home. 

The Petroglyph National Monument is spread out over a number locations in the northwest side of the city. Living so close, Todd has spent a lot of time there, and it was a huge advantage to us to have him take us since he pointed out a lot of petroglyphs we would have never seen on our own.  I took a ton of photos because, as with the rock art, they’re easier to see through the camera than with your eyes. 

The extra days in Albuquerque also let us visit with their now adult daughter Aspen, and it was truly a pleasure to get to know another adult child as we visit old friends with now grown up children. We didn’t especially enjoy howling winds, a dust storm, blizzard conditions, and cold, but being in a nice warm house with good friends definitely made the extra days worth it. Plus, Albuquerque is a beautiful city, and even when the weather wasn’t great the sunsets and the view were amazing. 

One of the benefits of the unplanned detour to Santa Fe and Los Alamos was that we were very close to Bandelier National Monument, Besides the incredible natural history accessible at this park, it is an impressive archeological site with cavates and petroglyphs of the Ancestral Pueblo.  As we left Los Alamos and drove towards Bandelier, we had to go through a manned security gate near the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  The guard wanted proof of our citizenship, and had to look inside the camper.  It was a little unsettling, but considering what they study at the laboratory, it’s probably a good thing that they check on who’s driving by.  We continued on to the park, where we found that the Visitors’ Center is housed in an old lodge, and well maintained trails to the cavates and petroglyphs start right behind the building. We suited up for a hike, locked the dogs in the camper, and took off with a surprisingly high number of other people also out to tour the site.

We pulled out of Bandelier National Monument around 1:30, and headed for Albuquerque, where Todd and Tatiana had just arrived home.

We hadn’t planned to make Santa Fe our next capital, but since we wanted to catch Todd and Tatiana in Albuquerque and had a couple of days to kill, and because the weather report sounded like the weather would actually be pleasant, we headed north.  The drive became a little bit grueling because we ran into some unexpected high winds near Vaughn on the way there, but as I checked weather reports for the more northern towns we were passing through on the way to Santa Fe, it looked like the high winds were in a relatively narrow corridor, which proved to be the case.  As we drove out of the high winds, some beautiful views which we could actually enjoy opened up to the north.

We were a little disturbed by the snow on the peaks we were approaching, and a little more disturbed by the increasingly large piles of snow we could see from the highway.  But, it was sunny and in the 50s and very pleasant once we were through the wind.  We were a little surprised that as we drove towards and into Santa Fe, the snow cover got deeper rather than disappearing, and by the time we got to the Capitol, the ground was completely covered in about eight inches of snow.  When we had looked at the weather reports, it had never occurred to us to see what the weather had been over the past week and to see if there was any snow on the ground!  In the end, it didn’t really matter because despite the snow the warm sunshine made anything more than a sweatshirt unnecessary, and Ty and Princha got to see snow for the first time in their Belizean potlicker lives.  Kismet had played in the snow when we were in the US in the winter of 2015/2016, but those two didn’t really know what to make of it.  Ty eventually came around and decided that it could be fun, but Princha wasn’t really a fan.

When the dogs finished playing in the snow, we walked on to the Capitol.  The Santa Fe Capitol is the only round capitol in the country, and one of only 11 capitols that do not have domes.  Downtown Santa Fe is a beautiful and clean city, and the Capitol makes a worthy centerpiece.  Even on a Saturday afternoon all sorts of people were walking around, in and out of the building.  The building is open to visitors, so Tom and I took turns holding the dogs outside while the other went in, since even though we haven’t been visiting the insides of the capitols, we’d read that this one was worth a look, and it was.

Before leaving Bottomless Lakes SP that morning, we had looked online for a place to stay for the night.  We saw a number of BLM lands listed, but most had the caveat that you had to get there on a bumpy dirt road, and since we didn’t know what time we’d be pulling in, we had decided that wasn’t a great idea.  We found a Harvest Host brewery in Los Alamos that had all good reviews, and since we were interested in seeing Los Alamos anyway, we booked.  We finished walking around the capitol complex in Santa Fe around 4pm, and headed towards Los Alamos and the Bathtub Brewing Co-Op.  As we were pulling out of Santa Fe, we realized that Tom wasn’t prepared to hook up the Buddy heater that night, so we did a detour north to a Walmart in Española to pick up a couple 1# propane cylinders to run the heater. That meant we arrived at the brewery shortly after dark.

This shouldn’t have been a problem.  It’s in the center of Los Alamos, and they knew we were coming.  We checked in, and the bartender told us to drive around to the back where we would be able to park in their private back lot, off the Main Street.  When we got to the back lot, we found that it was snow-covered dirt, and the space for our rig was a little tight because another car was parked next to it, and they’ve been doing some landscaping and construction so there were dirt piles and building refuse piles.  Tom maneuvered around the obstacles and started to pull into the spot…and sunk.  It hadn’t occurred to anyone that the warm temperatures melting the snow on the dirt lot would create a mud pit.  Tom realized what was happening right away and stopped, and I got out and switched on the 4WD hubs, and Tom was able to back out before we went any deeper without doing major damage to the lot surface.  We drove back around to the front to find out what to do, and after a quick conference among the brewery management reps who were there that night, they cleared us to park on the street behind the brewery. They were working hard to convince us that we’d be okay and safe on the street, and we put their minds at ease by explaining that we’re actually pretty comfortable parking on the streets in Mexican cities, so a back street in Los Alamos for one night seemed like a pretty good deal to us.

After we parked the truck, we went into the brewery to fulfill our Harvest Host commitment and buy some beer.  Bathtub Row Brewing has a very yummy chocolate stout, so we had no difficulty drinking a couple of beers each and talking to the locals about what’s fun to do in the area.  We hadn’t realized that the National Park Service had turned the Los Alamos Manhattan Project into a National Historical Site until we started talking and also found out that the brewery’s name, Bathtub Row, is because all the lead scientists working on the Manhattan Project lived in the nearby row of houses which were considered nicer than the temporary houses because they had bathtubs.  We ended up sitting with the local museum director, who not only explained a lot of the history to us, but also gave us a packet so we could do a walking tour of the town in the morning.  We perused the information, drank our stouts, and went back to the camper to get something to eat before going to bed.

Back in the camper, Tom decided to try the Buddy Heater with the propane cylinders.  It started right up, and created a lot of heat…for about 10 minutes.  When it went out, Tom shook the cylinder to see if it had burned through it that quickly, but it was still almost full.  He tried to restart the heater, but it wouldn’t start.  After a few minutes, it restarted, but then it went out again after a very short time.  When all else fails, we read the directions, so Tom pulled out the instruction book and started through the trouble shooting tree.  Not too far down the tree, Tom discovered that most of the Buddy Heaters don’t work well above 7000’.  We checked the altimeters on our watches, and discovered that we were at almost 7400’.  That solved the mystery of the failing Buddy Heater, but didn’t do much towards keeping us warm, so we closed up for the night and went to bed, hoping it wouldn’t get cold enough to freeze our pipes.  All things considered, we both slept well, and woke to temperatures still slightly above freezing, with our pipes intact.  Cooking breakfast warmed the camper up to a tolerable temperature, and we ate and then went on our walking tour.

After our walking tour, we telephoned Bandelier National Monument to see if the roads to get there were okay, and if the trails were open.  The ranger who answered the phone assured us that everything was open and accessible, so we packed up and headed for Bandelier National Monument.