by Marcella Ortega
Daily Lobo
It was too early Saturday morning. Tired and bitter, I picked up my friend Jasmine to begin our trip to White Sands. We met up with the photographer, Harrison Brooks, and his two friends; one a transfer student from New Jersey and the other a Harry Potter look-alike from southern New Mexico. We blasted "Road Runner #1" by the Original Modern Lovers as we followed the guys south.
Dodging tumbleweeds, I struggled to keep up with Brooks as we passed through the desert. The scenery looked like it came out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. We encountered a bit of misfortune as we lost sight of the photographer's red Scion and my iPod battery died. We had to sift though Phil Collins and the rest of the garbage on the airwaves in search of a decent song.
We met Brooks in San Antonio, N.M., and headed down the two-lane highway toward Ruidoso. The Scion passed us as they held a sign out the window accusing me of driving like an elderly woman. We passed the black lava beds of El Malpais National Park and stopped in Ruidoso for lunch.
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The place was called OlÇ Taco and served decent Mexican food. However, the waitress seemed to be extremely frustrated with our ringleader Brooks and his buddies for no apparent reason. It became comical as we paid our tickets. The waitress was aggravated beyond belief as she was obligated to interact with the scruffy looking characters, but they didn't let it get them down. They had bigger fish to fry as we headed toward Alamogordo.
That afternoon we arrived at White Sands National Monument, one of the greatest natural wonders in the world. The monument is surrounded by White Sands Missile Range. It was first used by the U.S. government for testing rockets captured from the German's after World War II, and remains a testing site for experimental weaponry and space technology.
The entry fee was $3 per person and the park has a museum, bookstore, boardwalk and nature center. However, we chose to spend our afternoon on the dunes of the largest gypsum field in the world. The gypsum was deposited at the bottom of a shallow sea that covered the area 250 million years ago.
We drove down a glistening white path and parked next to some uninhabited dunes. We walked barefoot in the sand and almost cried laughing as we struggled to reach the top of a dune where the Brooks' friends were having a ball. Harry Potter was filled with so much excitement, he lightheartedly rolled down a dune. Shortly after, the photographer emerged from the other side of the dunes struggling with a load of equipment in hand. He wore rugged cowboy boots and was short of breath, yet had a cigarette pressed between his lips.
After several failed attempts at sandboarding, we drove to another spot where Brooks saw a giant mound of sand inhabited by a dried-out tree. We looked at the scenery and rested as we waited for dusk. We called it a day after the photographer snapped a postcard sunset.
The trip to White Sands turned out to be an enjoyable experience. Not only were we able to amuse ourselves in the sand all day like a group of kids, but we also made the long trip through the desert a comic journey. It was a great way to break the monotony of grueling weekdays, and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.
