White Sands National Park

Posted byTrail RockerPosted inUncategorized

This morning Barbara and I traveled to the White Sands National Park. This park was created for the purpose of protecting 275 square miles of dunes made predominately of gypsum. On the Mohs hardness scale, which goes from 1, softest, to 10, hardest, gypsum is a 1. What makes these dunes different from other dunes is the gypsum. Most dunes are made up of quartz sand where these dunes are made up of gypsum sand, and White Sands National Park is the largest collection of gypsum dunes anywhere on earth. In fact, this collection of dunes is visible from the International Space Station.

After we left the national park we drove to McGinn’s Pistachio World to see the worlds largest pistachio.

Last evening after we arrived in the town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, where we are currently staying, I stepped outside to view the moon and Venus low in the western sky. It was a great view. I tried taking photos of the two, but they just don’t do it justice. I did get a nice shot of the waxing crescent moon.

Critter tracks. If you look closely you can see ripple marks running top to bottom.
This is a photo of ripple marks in the sand. These are created by the wind blowing across the surface of the sand. In this photo the wind was blowing from the upper left corner of the photo to the lower right corner.
This photo shows the same thing on a larger scale.
A moth lying in the sand for scale. Here you can see the size of the sand grains.
This is an example of cross-bedding. As the direction of the wind changes so does the angle of the cross bed.
Waxing crescent moon.
Venus in the upper left corner and the moon in the lower right corner.
Worlds largest pistachio.

Published by Trail Rocker

I am a retired professional geologist who loves hiking, photography and travelling with my lovely wife Barbara.

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