New Mexico: White Sands National Monument

Lilo finally arrived, which means that I am officially not in a long distance relationship anymore!

This also means that I am no longer living alone in Santa Fe. And if you are a non-hippy 23 year old, new to living alone in this city, then you know that it can get really lonely. Finally I will be able to do all the things I have been meaning to do, but had nobody to do them with. And since we only have three weeks left here before we hit the road, every day of every weekend has been booked for something 

The first one of these things, and the one that had been heading my list, is camping at White Sands National Monument during the full moon. And I got to do it THIS LAST WEEKEND! 

 Lilo decided that we should hike for an hour to find our camping spot. Have you ever 'hiked' on dunes?! Needless to say, I gave up more than a couple of times on the way.

This was the only 'structure' we found during our two days there. It had a strange plant on the other side.  Everything else in the park was dunes and dunes. 

This is the kind of place you only dream of. It is a completely white desert. At some point when the sun was starting to go down, the sky matched the color of the sand, and it felt as if we were in a completely white world, like this part of the matrix! I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, and I can't believe that I didn't go before. This is definitely the kind of place where you want to go more than once. It seems like the perfect location to escape everything and just relax.

Here is a selection out of the hundreds of pictures we took. Hopefully they are enough to convince you that you have to go there. 

We got there at noon. It was over 100 degrees, and there wasn't a single place with shadow. My car camouflaged perfectly  with the dunes.

We found some picnic tables, and decided to shelter from the sun while we figured out what to do. The picnic table area looked like it was from outer space! 

We had bagels with peanut butter, pistachios that we bought at a  pistachio farm near the park, and MY FAVORITE: A prickly pear lollipop!! We found it at the park's gift shop. If you know me, then you know I love prickly pear, so this was my dream come true

Lilo didn't bring a hat, and it didn't take us too long to realize that he was going to need to cover his head. So I gave him my girly scarf and we tied it on his head :D
(Notice how bright the sand was in the background. I tried taking my sunglasses off just to see if my eyes would adapt, since I hate sunglasses, but nope. It was way too much.)

I tried to get my entire body under the shadow of my hat. I failed. 

Then I tried running to produce some wind. This just made me feel hotter. 

It was soooo beautiful, but sooo painful that we had to leave the park and wait for the sun to go down a little bit before we set camp.

A couple of hours later we came back and it was much more bearable. Lilo realized that his shadow looked like Peter Pan's. Look at that! 

One of the best things about this place is that even though it was over 100 degrees, with an incredibly shiny sun,  the sand was not hot at all! it was actually kind of cool. So I hiked barefoot for the rest of the trip. 

I also wrote my name on the sand so that I could be remembered FOREVER.

We walked and walked, and walked, and tripped, and got up, and walked more trying to explore

We finally took a break, drank some water, ate some pistachios and baby food, and just laid there. Then we looked around and noticed that the sky had matched the sand! it was an incredible feeling. The picture above was not retouched. This was really what it looked like to infinity and beyond. 

We would have stayed there forever, but we had to walk an hour to get to our camp spot, and set camp before it got dark. So we walked back to the car, during this beautiful sunset. 

Then we picked up our stuff, and walked to our camp spot.  

We managed to set camp right when the sun went down. 

And then the full moon illuminated everything. It was such a beautiful and bright night. 

But the morning was even brighter.
We picked everything up and started back. It was getting insanely hotter by the minute, so sadly we had to leave fast.

This was definitely my favorite thing I have done in New Mexico. I am extremely happy that I didn't miss it, and I would recommend for anyone to make a trip here, even if just to see this place.