I didn't sleep much last night. You can't tell (and neither could I until I laid down) but the tent was on a bit of a slant. I shuffled all night in my sleeping bag, trying to avoid rolling onto Brian.
Here is a better view from the trail head we were on yesterday. Off into the distance are the San Andreas Mountains and White Sands.
It was a 16 mile ride into Las Cruces from Cloudcroft - all downhill. It was lovely.
We knew we were getting close to the White Sands when we saw this sign.
38 miles into our ride, we found the national monument.
After a visit at the visitor's center, we decided to ride 6 miles into the monument and take a short stroll through the sand.
We got rid of all our baggage to make the 6 mile ride a little easier.
The dunes were magnificent.
It was like riding on snow. What is amazing about the sand here is that it does not get hot - in fact, it stay very cool.
We lollygagged through the sand dunes and explored for a while.
It was nice to take off my shoes during the middle of the ride.
Beautiful, huh?
This picture basically sums up White Sands National Monument: white sand, dunes, and mountains in the distance.
I found this while wandering through the dunes. I thought it was worthy of taking a picture of.
At some point during the ride, after we hopped back in the saddles, I ran over a big bug and it blew up all over my leg.
The wind was not being kind to us after our stroll through the sand. It was rather difficult to ride to the hills we had to climb.
I've begun to very much dislike these mountains. There was a lot of climbing involved in this trip that I did not anticipate. I do not like climbing for thousands of feet. It is no fun.
Up the hill we go! 1,800 feet until the top of the pass.
It must have been an hour until I reached the top of this hill. I believe it was 8 miles long. after 8 miles, I could have done without it.
There are many things about New Mexico that I do not like: mountains, large bugs, desert, etc. There is one thing that I really do lie: sunsets. They are simply magical.
Brian got a pretty nasty flat tire on our ride down into the city. After having stopped for a while, we continued on and found a bike shop where I purchased new gloves to stop Brian from complaining about how bad mine smelled. We were fortunate enough to find a fire department that would let us camp behind their station for the night. Unfortunately, Pizza Hut never called us back about free pizza.
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