White Sand 2021 - National Park #44

 Friday February 12, 2021

Both the kids (Freshman at Ursuline and 7^th grader at Greenhill) have a four-day winter break this weekend.  And it’s also, literally 20 or so degrees in Dallas so we decided to rent a minivan and drive to White Sands, NM, which, until recently, was just a national monument but last year President Trump made it the 62^nd national park.  When we started this, there were 59 so this one was never planned.

We rented the van this morning from Love Field, packed up, dropped the dog off at Pet Smart for a few days (☹) and hit the road around 8:30am or so.  We drove west to Abilene and stopped at a decent restaurant for lunch (Lytle Land & Cattle Company).  

As we left the restaurant, it was lightly snowing.  And dang, just past Abilene it’s a wintery wonderland.  Every tree limb of every tree is covered in snow.

We also hit some ice patches on the roads and saw a car spin our right before our eyes.  We passed several big rigs toppled over on the side of the road and lots of wrecked cars.  It’s a mess.

It’s 4pm now and we’re approaching the TX/NM border and it’s 21 degrees.  Supposedly, it’s 60 degrees plus in Alamogordo, NM, which is where we’re staying but we’re only 3.5 hours away and it’s hard to imagine how we’re gonna gain 40 degrees of temperature. 

It’s been relaxing and fun so far – everyone mostly sticks to their devices but we’ve seen some beautiful havoc from this unprecedented winder storm.  And just thousands of birds out by the wind farms that at first glance, look like crops. 

The kids are getting along great and this trip is bringing up old memories of almost one decade ago when we went on our first ever National Park trip with a three and five-year old to Carlsbad. 

It’s a strange time to be away from home.  We don’t return until Monday and it’s expected to drop to 7 degrees Sunday night and possibly 1 degree Monday night. 

But so far so good. 

We’re staying at a Holiday Inn and we’re stocked with our own eggs and bacon, in anticipation of COVID turning what would otherwise be a good breakfast, into a bag of carbs and a cup of coffee 😊