White Sands National Monument

Today Noelle, Parker and I woke up, packed up our campsite at Oliver Lee Memorial State park and headed over to White Sands National Monument. It was the second visit to White Sands for Noelle and I. On our previous trip we hiked all the hiking routes and spent the night in the monument's backcountry. One thing we had failed to do on our previous visit, however, was to sled the dunes. We would correct that mistake on this trip.

Our first stop in the monument was the gift shop. I purchased a saucer sled there along with some wax. Then we headed into the sand. We hiked the short boardwalk into the dunes

and then got back into the car for a drive into the heart of the dunes. Our first sledding stop turned out to be the best spot. I waxed up our sled and then hiked up the dune to hit the sand.

Parker seemed to enjoy watching, but we could not get him on the sled.

Noelle and I took turns sledding down the white gypsum sands.

We got in some good runs at our first stop!

We did wipe out a few times.

Eventually we moved on to a different sledding spot. None of the new spots turned out to be as good as our first.

We got a bit cocky though and soon we were sledding hands-free!

We had to hike quite a bit to some of our sledding spots.

We had a great time sledding the dunes and hope to return again!