After spending a week in Carlsbad, NM, Shae, Truffles and I moved on to Deming for 10 nights. We’d planned to make two stops along the way – PistachioLand and White Sands National Park.
We stopped for lunch at PistachioLand (home of the world’s largest pistachio, but worth a stop for everything else they have too) and then made our way on to White Sands National Park.
It was about 3pm by the time we arrived and there was quite a long line to get in as it was coming to the end of spring break and apparently lots of other people had the same idea as us. With another 1.5-2 hour drive ahead of us, we decided to return another day.
A few days later we got a fairly early start and headed back east to the park. White Sands National Park was once White Sands National Monument, becoming a National Monument in 1933. It was redesignated as a National Park in 2019, so that’s why you might see reference to it being a National Monument elsewhere (including on some signs at the park!)
No matter what it’s called though, it’s a fantastic place to visit. If you happen to stop at PistachioLand along your way, you’ll be able to see White Sands in the distance, a shimmering white expanse nestled about halfway between PistachioLand’s vineyard and the distant mountains.
We stopped off at the visitor center when we arrived and I was a little concerned when I saw a sign saying that dogs weren’t allowed. That conflicted with everything I’d seen online which said that White Sands National Park is extremely dog-friendly. As it transpires, that sign had been put up incorrectly – White Sands is indeed very dog-friendly, with the only places they’re not allowed being the visitor center and gift shop.
Speaking of the gift shop, be sure to stop there and pick up some sleds before you drive on into the park – you won’t regret it! If you don’t want to keep the sleds beyond your visit to White Sands, you can return them to the gift shop at the end of your visit for them to be reused/resold, plus you get some (but not all) of your money back.
After picking up a couple of sleds for ourselves, we drove on in to the National Park along Dunes Drive and stopped at the Interdune Boardwalk parking lot on the right hand side. We grabbed our sleds and lunch and headed across the road and up along the dunes to the right.
After spending the past couple of hours in the car, Truffles was ready to stretch her legs and so we let her play before we put our sleds to work. Dogs have to stay on a leash in the park, so we attached a long rope to her harness so that we could grab her easily if needed.
After about 10 minutes of chasing after her ball, she found a nice shady spot to cool off.
Cooling off in the sand didn’t prove to be a problem. While visiting PistachioLand a few days beforehand, I mentioned to the person at the checkout that we’d be visiting White Sands. She shared that the sand at White Sands National Park is unusual because it doesn’t get hot – even in the height of summer.
Sure enough, she was right. It was about 80° F (27° C) the day we visited and the sand was still incredibly cool. That’s because White Sands has gypsum dunes, with gypsum crystals staying far cooler than the kind of sand you’ll find on beaches. Covering 145,762 acres, that makes White Sands National Park the largest gypsum dunefield in the entire world.
With Truffles having expended some of her energy, it was time for me and Shae to have some fun. Growing up in England, I’d never gone sledding until I gave it a try on some fake snow in California more than a decade ago. Although it wasn’t snow-sledding, sand-sledding was a lot of fun nonetheless.
I was a little more successful than Shae when it came to sledding by virtue of not tipping over 😉
Even Truffles wanted to get in on the action!
After spending a little bit of time at that set of dunes, we went looking for even larger dunes to sled down. We drove to the far end of the road, with Dunes Drive turning into Loop Drive. Just around the corner at the top loop of Loop Drive is the Alkali Flat Trailhead.
The Alkali Flat Trail has a misleading name as it’s anything but flat. Thankfully there’s an information board advising you that the hike isn’t flat, so we knew ahead of time what would be in store.
It’s a five mile loop trail which takes you up and down sand dunes following trail markers seeing as there’s no visible trail like on many hikes.
White Sands National Park warns that a number of people have gotten lost on the Alkali Flat Trail in the past which can be particularly dangerous in the summer heat. They therefore recommend that if you lose sight of the next trail marker, you should head back the way you came.
You know how it’s always harder walking through the sand at the beach than walking along a boardwalk? Well, imagine that x10 when hiking the Alkali Flat Trail because in addition to walking along sand, you have to walk up sand.
Walking up the dunes is much harder work than you might anticipate, so we’d already decided before setting off that we wouldn’t even bother trying to make it the full five mile length. It was warm enough the day we visited – I can’t imagine how people do it in the height of summer when it’s 100°+ out.
Truffles tends to have boundless energy though, so she was happy running up the dunes ahead of us when we threw her ball up there.
Apparently we weren’t ascending the dune fast enough for her liking as she came back down to give us moral support.
It’s worth doing what we did and hiking at least some of the Alkali Flat Trail as you get some beautiful views of the dunes and the mountains in the distance.
After just under a mile, we decided to head back the way we came rather than continuing along the remaining ~4 miles. Before making our way back, we let Truffles chase after her ball a little more, ears flailing about as she ran back and forth.
The reason we’d decided to head back was because we wanted to conserve some of our energy as we knew we’d need it for what we had planned next – more sledding.
Sledding at White Sands National Park is a lot of fun, with the bigger the dunes, the better. However, the bigger the dunes means the bigger the climb and we’d found the tallest dunes we could to sled down.
I’d been surprised earlier when Truffles had been happy coming down on the sled with me, so she joined me on the even taller dune. It was a bit of work getting going initially, but I think she enjoyed it as much as I did (despite leaping off my lap at the bottom!)
Climbing up the dunes was taking it out of our legs, so we only slid down that dune two or three times before calling it a day. We also had plans to meet up with some friends in Las Cruces who Shae had met online, so we had to get going to meet them on time too.
Still, it was a fantastic day out at White Sands National Park, made even better by how pet-friendly it was.
Pure joy!
thanks for posting
Thanks!