White Sands National Park

While on a 3,500 mile road trip across the Southwestern United States in 2010, I decided to take a 400 mile detour to visit what was then White Sands National Monument did North of El Paso, Texas. At the time, access to the area was closed an average of two to three times weekly for missile testing in the bordering White Sands Missile Range, but I was fortunate to be able to watch the sun set behind the dunes. It would have been easy to skip New Mexico entirely in an effort to visit or spend more time at Arizona’s Antelope Canyon or Horseshoe Bend, Utah’s Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, or Colorado’s Mesa Verde or Black Canyon National Parks, but it would have been a shame to miss out on the glory of White Sands. The area was designated as a National Park in December 2019.