RV Lifestyle The history of the newly mintedWhite Sands National Park goes back far beyond these presidential decrees, however. A unique series of fossilized footprints known as the White Sands Trackway shows that almost 12,000 years ago, ancient humans were stalking giant sloths here, hunting varieties of megafauna that died out by the end of the Pleistocene Epoch. It was 2,000 years later that the enormous gypsum dunes for which the new national park was named began to form, the result of steady evaporation of what was once a vast inland sea and, later, a lake between the San Andres and SacramentoMountains. Prevailing winds eventually swirled those white gypsum sands into dunes. By the time European settlers arrived in the 1800s, the area was well known to bands of Apache who lived in the Tularosa Basin and surrounding mountain ranges. Their descendants now live on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation between Fort StantonSnowy River Cave National Conservation Area and Lincoln National Forest. The isolation and weather patterns of the Tularosa Basin create a unique experience for park explorers. Visitors can hike (trails range from easy to extremely difficult, perfect for every level of experience), partake in education ranger-led programs, and even sled down the dunes in a few designated places. Dunes Drive, a 12-kilometre scenic drive, leads from the visitor centre into the heart of the gypsumdunefield. The first four miles of Dunes Drive are paved and the last six kilometres are a hard-packed, gypsum road. The road is suitable for cars, motorcycles, recreational vehicles and buses. Along the road, you will find wayside exhibits, hiking trails, picnic areas, vault toilets and parking areas. The round-trip drive takes approximately 45 minutes without stops along the way. However, you may want to allow additional time for taking walks in the white sand, hiking a boardwalk over the dunes, photography or learning about the natural and cultural history. The hikes within the park do have trail markers, but there are miles and miles of dunes which you can explore with no markers at all. Don’t count on tracing your footsteps back, because winds can easily erase them in the sand. 26 | www.snowbirds.org
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