I decided to combine the last two days of my trip into one blog because 1) the very last day just had a five-hour drive, not much else, and 2) to give my friends a break from editing and publishing 1500-word posts each day. Anyway, last night’s sleep was the best out of the whole trip. Not perfect, not normal and cyclical, but better. Not having to write a post felt sad but admittedly relaxing, as I replaced that time with a few Bob’s Burgers episodes.
The morning before (so, Friday), we set out on a shorter drive to White Sands National Park, which has exactly what you’d think it has. Something to do with thousands of years of gypsum deposits, erosion down to the sand particle level, and weathering that carried salt out of bodies of water. A terrible explanation, I know (and I apologize), but I encourage you to check out the website!
It was exciting when we saw the long line of white to our right and I had to question whether that was the park or I was just delirious from a lack of sleep. It was, indeed, the park. In the visitor center, we saw families carrying large curved pieces of plastic around, and we learned that you could sit on those and slide down the sand dunes. Wow. This wasn’t just a little old desert like I had been expecting; this park had swag.
We drove along a road loop surrounded by hills of near-purely white sand. It felt like a beach without the water (which is probably some people’s worst nightmare… y’all shouldn’t come here). You could see the folds in the sand layers, like a crumpled sweatshirt, and places where hasty sandal-prints interrupted the sloping white. Here and there were camps of bushes, adding a necessary something to the otherwise minimal landscape.
With the sun and the zenith beating straight down, I was scared that the sand would be unbearable. Then, my dad had us pull over and told me to reach down into the sand. I dug in with both hands. And it was nice and cold! I wondered how pleasant it would be to just get buried in the cold sand.
We found a nice place to park, and I ran up a small hill with the sliding board. It was hard to get the momentum to slide down—even harder than it was to come up, honestly—but when I finally figured it out, it was pretty fun! Not that impressive, but still worth it.
We trekked up to an even taller dune that two other groups were sharing. When I went down again, I felt myself rotating sideways and kicked the sand with flailing legs to reorient myself, which only served to turn me in the other direction. I reached the bottom with a full spin and rolled over into the sand, laughing.
When I marched back up for a second try (which depleted absolutely all of my energy), a person at the top advised me to stay perfectly straight if I didn’t want to rotate. They were right! It was a much faster straight shot, speeding to the ground, and sliding (stylishly, I hope) to a finish. 
My mom and dad also took turns, each more entertaining than the last. At one point, my dad threw me the sliding plastic from the ground, and did it so skillfully that it came all the way up. I was so impressed, and I think some other visitors were, too.
My dad and I got to talking with the guy who had taught me how to slide down, and learned that they were very familiar with the park, having visited several times. At this time of year, they said, the dune we were on was the largest in the whole park, and was more on the steep side. In other times of the year, winds blow the sand farther, making the dunes longer.
I felt myself tipping into the early stages of heat exhaustion, so we started heading back, with a quick stop at the Playa Trail. It was a short walk out to a lakebed that, in some parts of the year, was filled with water. Today, it was just a puddle over mud. But, as I walking across the bed, knowing that it would be submerged in water and I’d be unable to do this months from now, I felt lucky and excited. I looked down and saw the spongy white and brown outlines around the hundreds of other footprints. I’m trying to think of a way to describe it, even a metaphor, but I’m coming up empty. It was such a beautiful work of art.
And that was our adventure in White Sands!
From there, we did an ambitious stretch to Abilene. Major thanks to my dad for carrying us through most of the trip, as my mom was uncomfortable with certain driving terrains, and I was just flat-out too tired. Thank you, Dad! Today’s drive was shockingly fun because we went through three so uniquely distinct types of terrain in just seven hours.
First, it was more of the impressive mountains—turns out we weren’t done with them yet. Then—and this was an absolute shock—we entered 
Lincoln National Forest. All of a sudden, the vegetation changed to humongous, towering Christmas trees that blanketed the mountains in their entirety. We even saw a little township in a clearing amidst the trees, complete with schools and everything. Some especially cool features: an outdoor setup for what seemed to me like a giant orchestra, or a theater of some sort. And a giant slide. Like, a giant one.
This never fails to impress me. A whole community in a mountain? What is it like for those kids when they go to college?
Anyway, when we left the forest, it was straighter, flatter stretches until Abilene. It was neat crossing the Texas-Mexico border, seeing “Welcome to Texas” in cursive on a rusty green sign, followed by a tiny Texas-shaped rock sculpture with Texas written on it (naturally).
It was interesting. Such tiny markers to celebrate our arrival. Then again, little things can say quite a lot.
Despite all of the incredible mountains and boxy-curvy houses, some of the prettiest sights happened in the very last hours to Abilene. The road was completely straight, and the land on either side was flat—not bushy yellow flatland, I’m talking about raked farm flatland. Like the surface of a table. If the table stretched on for infinity.
The dirt was pure orange, and was cast in a brilliant shade from the golden sun. Although orange is my favorite color, it’s a point of conflict there exists a disgusting tint called “burnt orange”. But these fields reminded me why orange is my favorite. The color represents joy for a reason.
I love this picture because I just caught the edge of the plot of orange, as well as a lovely waving windmill:
Speaking of windmills, we saw another windmill community here, which I thought was just the perfect way to wrap up the trip. Remember, we saw windmills on day one, too? Maybe these tall buddies are waving to their windmill buddies over in Middle Texas. I sure hope so.
We also passed a few oil mining counties and saw huge groups of oil rigs (which I’ve never seen before). Some
were stationary, but some were swinging up and down, their intricate, elaborate contraptions working to bring up oil. I don’t know about you, but when I see machines like oil rigs and windmills, it’s hard not to give them humanlike qualities. Windmills, too, but oil rigs especially—maybe it’s because they are like really slow-moving woodpeckers?
Windmills are waving at you. Oil rigs are just chugging along. And when they’re in a giant group, it’s a community. They’re all really good friends for some reason. Some are workaholics, so they keep spinning and chugging while the others chill. And on other days, the other ones are the workaholics. Okay, cool. I’m ready for the sentient robots now.
We were still driving after the sun had set. The sky grew blacker. I suddenly became very desperate to see a starry night sky with a cloudy Milky Way, which I had heard you could see in parts of New Mexico (in some national parks and where there’s no sources of light, like maybe a stretch of road between towns). But I was sorely out of luck. There was lots of light on our highway (which of course was really a good thing for the driver). It was also cloudy.
I think the Road Trip Gods heard my plea and sort of wanted to help me. We eventually saw hundreds of red light spots all around us. The spots were on windmills and very tall polls. They blinked asynchronously, but way out in a distance, there was a single row of these lights that flashed in and out at the same exact time. It gave the warm, cozy feeling of watching Christmas lights on a tree—Christmas in July, anyone?
I also saw a moving, flashing white light out to my right which was probably on another tall structure of some sort, or was maybe just my imagination, but the flashes looked like those cartoon zigzag-shaped speech bubbles for when the character screams something crazy. So with all of this reasoning I’m going with the most plausible assumption: I saw a UFO.
I mean, come on. We’re right by New Mexico. Ever heard of Roswell?
After my UFO sighting, and a bit of exhausted hotel searching, we finally found a place to crash for the night.
The drive today felt quicker and breezier, and had a little bit of the I’m-bored-let’s-just-get-home vibes that I dreaded. Even though I said in post #1 that I hoped I would never feel that way about a road trip, I’ve decided that such a feeling is actually not that bad. Sometimes, a whole lot of scenery changes, or the same flat land for several hours in a row, can feel…overstimulating, I guess. And you just need that light at the end of the tunnel of riding back into your neighborhood, and collapsing into your very own bed.
For once, I don’t have much to say about this part of the drive. Some of today’s features were the same as yesterday’s—oil rig buddies, for example. When we finally got home, I took the most wonderful five hour nap. Now it’s 11 p.m., and I won’t be tired for a long time.
Good night anyway. See you…from home!
—May Sarin, managing editor
