It's still early enough to visit Alamogordo's main attraction, the New Mexico Museum of Space History. The models of rockets and satellites are interesting but easily trumped by the astronaut food. On the space shuttle, they toss back Pepsis in what look like whipped cream dispensers, but back on the Mercury flights, dinner consisted of little brown squares labeled "graham cracker cubes" and "cheese cracker cubes." Clearly, NASA was testing the future of airline dining.

Southwest of Alamogordo on Highway 70, White Sands National Monument first appears on the horizon as a glare, and then the shape of the dunes comes out, pure white against the brown and green surroundings. White Sands is 275 square miles of gypsum sand, and even on a hot day you can walk barefoot on it.

White Sands National Monument: the sand looks and crunches like snow (New Mexico Department of Tourism) [enlarge photo] FEBRUARY 2005 ISSUE • Table of Contents • Secret Hotels of the Caribbean • Australian Road Trips • Southern New Mexico • Reykjavík • A Month in New Zealand • Bedbugs are Back • New Lessons in Online Savings

We buy a sled at the gift shop, then drive to the park's biggest dunes. We try to describe to each other how weird this place is, but words fail. Surrounded by giant dunes, the only colors we see are the white sand glare and the pure blue sky above. Except for the tarantulas, even the insects are translucent white. Lynn climbs 50 feet up a dune and leaps onto the sled as if the sand were New England snow.

We get to Las Cruces, the state's second largest city, just in time to find a hotel with that vital something for summer travel in New Mexico (and an afternoon playing in the sand): an indoor pool.

Days three and four

Lodging

Food

Attractions