White Sands National Monument, New Mexico - New Year's Travel Day 2 - 1/3

       During New Year's holidays, my husband and I went on a road trip for 5 days. On January 1st, we left from Tucson, Arizona in the morning and headed toward New Mexico. When we got on our car, it started raining. It took 6 hour or so to get White Sands National Monument, and we were able to see beautiful rainbow in the sky many times during our long road trip . :) 

      There was a Border Patrol checkpoint about a mile before the monument entry. Many years ago, my friend from Japan told me that you should take a green card or passport (Not only driver's license) with you when you drive close to the border between the U.S. and Mexico. If you are US citizen, it might be no problem though. We showed the officer our permanent residence cards and were able to go through the point. Obviously, the officer was not friendly and looked very serious.

      We arrived at White Sands National Monument just in time. It usually costs $5 per person to enter this National Park, but the friendly ranger at the entrance smiled at us and told us that we could enter for free because it was New Year's Day. :)  Lucky, it stopped raining when we got there. :)

       There were white sands everywhere. As the sun was setting, the sky beautifully turned pink and orange.

      While we hiked the short narrow trail, we enjoyed watching the beautiful sky.

     There were many educational boards on the trail.

     We stayed there for only about an hour, but we really enjoyed the breathtaking scenery. We headed toward Texas before very dark.

White Sands National Monument
19955 Highway 70 West 
Alamogordo, NM 88310



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