One of the most amazing sights in New Mexico is White Sands National Park - a huge gypsum deposit in the middle of the Tularosa Basin. Giant ghostly dunes extend for miles in a landscape unlike any other on earth. So of course the American government decided to blow it up! The whole area is designated the White Sands Missile Range, and a little way off is where they exploded the first atomic bomb.
Luckily there were no big bangs on our day walking around it. We decided to try one of the more challenging loop hikes, never intending to go all the way around but just to get off the beaten track, and as temperatures soared we turned our pasty British bodies back for some sand sledging before lunch.
In contrast, a little way north is a huge black smear across the landscape known as the Valley Of Fires. This is somewhat false advertising as no fires are in evidence, instead it's a massive lava deposit from an eruption 5,000 years ago. The ground is folded and fractured with sharp rocks, although a lot of desert plants have made good attempts at putting down roots. There is no sledging here.
On the way back from there we stopped off at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site, where you can see outstanding prehistoric Jornada Mogollon rock art. That's what the brochure says, but when you're looking at "Bob woz ere 1992" scratched onto a rock it's hard not to be skeptical.
What I can say with certainty is that it's a lot hotter down in the valley than up on the mountain tops. And the age-old solution to that is: more ice cream at Pistachioland.
