On a Sunday we were on the New Mexico/Texas border photographing outside celebrations and roadside cacti. On Monday we were a hundred miles northeast, here:

Even after being there and taking this photo, it’s still convincing enough to have me believing it was taken somewhere in the arctic circle, and that’s a lone fishing shack in the middle of nowhere.

But it’s not. In fact it was warm enough for us to walk around like this all day:

It was incredibly windy that afternoon, when just the day before it was sunny and calm. We passed this guy on the ride over…

Really? Reliable Carriers? Except for when the wind blows you off the road.

We were on our way to White Sands National Monument — somewhere I’d been looking forward to exploring since the beginning of our journey. Two people from opposite sides of the country told me White Sands was their absolute favorite place to visit in the states, which meant we had high expectations for the national monument. We wondered what we could do besides hike around the dunes and take photos. “This will only be a two hour stop, I’m sure.” We also wondered how it’d be possible to hike around the dunes and take photos when the wind was causing sandstorms in every direction. Surely we’d need some sort of protective eyewear to enjoy our time in White Sands.

Our first white sand dune sighting was a few miles outside of the national monument. They were beautiful but covered in dead plants and other brush, and I was pretty sure the Boyz II Men music video from my childhood showcased incredibly smooth, white sand dunes and incredibly smooth, matching white outfits. It was an exciting first dune sighting, Boys II Men or not.

We arrived at the monument around 1pm. It was so frickin’ windy out, there was a traffic jam of tumbleweed in the parking lot. Every second another one went whizzing past our heads. Usually I get excited about tumbleweed, (I also got excited for corn, so you can tell how exposed to other parts of the country I was when we first started the trip) but tumbleweed is another story when it’s really windy out, they no longer tumble…

We headed into the visitor center to see if the park was open to visitors. Despite the intense wind, they were. We searched around the gift shop for some food and discovered that one can SLED down the dunes in White Sands National Monument and, lucky us, the gift shop was selling used sleds for just $10!!! So we talked to the woman at the register about sledding and she told us that, “nah, the conditions today aren’t exactly perfect for sledding.” “Are you sure?” “Well I wouldn’t sled in weather like this.” She said.

We drove into the park for a few miles and saw some kids sledding down the dunes. We asked them and they concurred, sledding just wasn’t working out today. The further in we drove, the higher the dunes got and the less crowded the parking lots were. When finally we reached an empty parking lot in the back, surrounded by 30ft tall dunes, I was ready to burst! “When is the next time we’ll have the chance to sled down white sand dunes!??!?! And for all we know those kids have no idea how to sled. They’re from the south, they don’t get snow! They don’t sled!” We turned around and headed back to the gift shop.

$21 dollars later and we had in our possession two used sleds and two blocks of wax. I was pretty sure the reason those kids couldn’t sled was because they were on a crappy dune, so we drove back, way back to the empty parking lot and super-tall dunes.

We got ourselves ready to sled like we never have before. Sunglasses, a light sweatshirt and no shoes.

“Are you ready Mister?”

“Hell yes.”

Once we climbed to the top of the dune and saw how steep it was, I knew a few adjustments needed to be made. How, I wondered, could I sled down this dune, hold on to Mister and keep my balance at the same time? Ah yes…

We climbed up and sled down that same dune for hours. Taking a break every so often to shoot some photos and appreciate the wind-created patterns…

Only one side of the dunes were steep enough to sled down, but it was an awesome prize when we finally reached the top.

“Wheeeee!”

Just before sunset we embarked on a journey — hiking eight or nine dunes out, camera in one hand, sled in the other, we watched the sunset at the top of a dune for a good hour.

Looking all around us, the only thing we could see for miles were white sand dunes. I took so many vertical landscapes that I liked it was hard to cut any out.

On the way back to the T@B, we climbed back up one side of every dune, and sled down the other. That was just the freaking icing on the cake. I was so happy and in love with our day, I didn’t mind that my eyes were crusted with sand and tears, or that I had so much sand in my hair that it would take at least five showers to get it all out. White Sands National Monument is in my top three experiences of the whole road trip, I highly recommend a visit to the dunes (make sure you sled!!!)

Click here to see all our photos from White Sands.

And if you’ve gotten this far: Tune in at 2pm today, we have a video of our visit to White Sands!!!

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