Aj filled you in on most of the Texan details, so I suppose I'll continue on with New Mexico.
After driving through the magical New Mexican mountain terrain, we arrived at White Sands National Monument. This is a sprawling, glistening, white dune desert, which just so happens to be located inside a US Missile Testing range site. Hm.
Anyway, the entrance to the White Sands was a startling and phenomenal experience. We actually thought that we were entering a strange new planet at first. Fields of brown grass were interrupted suddenly by large hills of white sand. Strange cacti were growing out the white abyss. Even the sky, with its larger-and-more-dramatic-than-usual clouds, seemed strange.
Miss Rombach and I signed up for a camp site, found the parking lot for said site, gathered all our necessary camping gear (ie: cameras, bulky sleeping bags, wine, tent, pillows, sand-sledding-sled), and set off for the approximately one mile hike to our home for the night. This took place in broad day light, and believe me, even in the bright New Mexican light, the site was hard to find.
Upon finding our "site" (read: just a pole that was mostly buried under sand with a cryptic "8" carved on it), we set about doing what we needed to do: photograph our surreal surroundings and set up our tent.
After the successful tent set-up, Aj and I departed ways to separately photograph for a couple hours. I don't remember the last time I was in a place where everywhere I turned I just had to take a photo. It was actually exhausting. But, I think the experience yielded some lovely and interesting photographs. At least, I hope so.
After the sun set and the extreme quiet descended on us, we decided to crack open a bottle of wine and enjoy the setting. We reveled in the huge sky, admired the faraway lightning storm, took some nice photos of the night landscape, and talked about the big things, like life and love and travel.
The winds were picking up, yes. And the lightning was starting to feel like it was getting a little close. But we were happy, safe, nice girls in a nice and safe desert.
We crawled into our tent, set up our sleeping bags, and within seconds, a burst of wind attacked our tent, causing it to cave in on us. We forced our way out of the tent, which at this point was no more than flimsy material trying to act like a cloak instead of a shelter, and proceeded to discuss our options.
Well, "discuss our options" is putting it a bit differently than how it actually went. What actually happened, was once we were out of the tent, we decided the only option was to go back to the car and sleep safely in its metal arms for the night.
So we set off, in the pitch black, with one flashlight, to make the mile hike back to the parking lot. Problem was, remember how we had trouble finding our camp site in the daylight? Yeah, well, in the dark abyss, it was actually impossible to orient ourselves. We wandered in the desert for maybe 45 minutes, arguing back and forth about the location of the car.
Turns out, we couldn't find the car. Even the ever-growing lightning storm didn't help light the way to safety. So, we realized the only thing to do, other than just perish in the night burrowed in a sand dune, was to go back to our tent. We found our site rather easily (Aj was much more level-headed than me. I was actually resigned to the fact that I would just die in the desert). Our tent was now upside down, flapping wildly in the wind. Obviously, not a welcoming home for the night.
Aj was exhausted and said she was just going to get her sleeping bag and sleep outside. Seemed to be the only option. We threw all of our stuff in the tent, hoping to ground it a bit, grabbed our sleeping bags, and set up camp about 20 feet from the tent.
Miss Rombach had no problem falling fast asleep right away. She had a bandanna over her eyes to keep the sand out. I put sunglasses on for some form of protection, which was both unsuccessful and uncomfortable. It took me a good hour or two to actually fall asleep. The sound of the flapping tent was both distracting and like something out of a horror movie. The sand in my eyes and hair was painful. The lightning was scary (even though I knew that it was too far away to hit us, I also thought for sure it would end up killing us both in the night). And, I was afraid for my cameras, which were inside the tent, probably being pummeled to their mechanical deaths.
Some sleep was acquired that night. Lots of tossing and turning. Soon it was morning, and the sun was starting to peak over the horizon, and all was well again. We didn't die via lightning or wind or desert animal. My cameras were fine. The tent was in one piece. Neither of us went blind from the sand.
We took some sunrise pictures, packed up our stuff, and made it back to the car by about 10am. Exhausted, victorious, hungry, sand-covered girls.
That day we would head to Santa Fe. More on that adventure soon.
I'm leaving you guys with four pictures. Just four pictures which will hopefully describe some of the aspects of the White Sands Adventure 2011.
signing out for now,
Sarah
