White Sands National Monument

We woke up early one morning, loaded the car, and took off across the snowy desert toward White Sands National Monument.  There is one cardinal rule for driving across a desert, even a snowy one, and we
broke it.

We left with less than half a tank of gas.  We realized the gravity of our error when we pulled into a gas station with a sign folded over, flapping in the breeze.  For Lease, it said.  And they didn't mean the gas.  Well, shoot.  Having enough fuel and water is serious business around here.  We had to back up and reroute to get to the closest gas station nearly 40 miles away.

We made it to Roswell after lunch.

You know Roswell.  It's the place where there were reports of a UFO crash in 1947 with a few dead aliens and a single alien survivor who would have looked something like this.

There were signed affadavits of eye witnesses swearing to the truth of their accounts of a crash, an alien in the hospital, and crash site debris that was made up of a very light material that looked like foil, but couldn't be burned or cut.  We also saw photos of UFO's that had been determined to be a button or lampshade, photos of crop circles, as well as photos of Area 51 (which the government admitted existed in 1995).  The teaching lesson?  Not one truth or another, but a lesson in critical thinking. 

From there we headed to Roadrunner Campground with one all-important stop to pick up sleds for sledding down the dunes at White Sands.

It was a cold night.  In the upper 20's.  We kept warm -- and full -- by the grill; no open fires in the desert.

We were cozy in the 3-season tent.  Manuel slept in the small summer tent with keys to the car just in case.  He made it through the night, and the next day warmed up nicely.

We headed to White Sands National Monument, an easy 25 minute drive down I-70.  The boys were a bit chagrin to learn that sledding would come after they finished their National Park Junior Ranger booklets.  Before you know it, it was time for lunch out of the back of the car.  Is it called tailgating if you're just digging peanut butter and jelly out of the back of your car?

As an aside, the lid to the jelly jar went missing shortly after this photograph was taken.  We looked all over, in and out of the car.  It was nowhere to be found until ... a few days later when someone found it inside the jar of peanut butter jar.

Finally, we were off to the dunes.  We soon found ourselves in a sea of 40 feet high bright white dunes for miles in any direction.  It was breathtaking.

There was beauty from every vantage point.

This is what the boys had been waiting for.  They went down on their sleds head first and feet first.  They jumped off the side of the dune and rolled down the slope.  They made avalanches in the sand.  They experimented with how the trail of erosion would travel when they stuck their hand, fist, or foot in the sands.  And they made the biggest avalanches they could, burying hapless plastic aliens they'd picked up from Roswell.

After they emptied out all their sand by hand, they stood upside-down and shook out what was left.

As you can see, it was worth the effort.

We visited the New Mexico Museum of Space History on our third day.

The boys got to experience the tight quarters of the Mercury Capsule.  They learned about the Ansari X Prize, a competition modeled after the Orteig Prize which offered $25,000 to the first person to fly across the Atlantic Ocean; a prize ultimately won, of course, by Charles Lindburg. 

The Ansari X Prize competition was designed to spur commercial space aviation.  It awarded $10,000,000 to the company that could build and launch a spacecraft with room for three people 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the Earth's surface twice within two weeks. It was won in 2004 by Mojave Aerospace Ventures / Tier One / Scaled Composites.

We also learned about the Daisy Track.  This track, an air-powered sled track named after the popular toy Daisy Rifle in the 1950's, allowed scientists to study the impact of rapid acceleration -- and more importantly deceleration -- on the human body.

We also learned about John Stapp.  An M.D., a Ph.D., and a Colonel in the Air Force, Stapp who voluntarily subjected himself to countless tests to better understand the impact of sudden deceleration on the human body.  As a result of shooting down the Sonic Wind 1 at a mind-numbing 632 mph, he was nicknamed the 'fastest man alive.'  He withstood 46.2 G's when the sled came to a stop in 1.4 seconds.  

Stapp had a big voice in having seat belts installed as standard safety equipment in cars.  Thankfully, over the years, they've come up with likable folks like Vince & Larry to help spread the word about the importance of wearing them.  Remember them?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5h2NF2xMYI