I left camp at 9AM and drove 18 miles to White Sands National Monument. Can you guess why they call it that? Well, the sand dunes formed over 250 million years ago when this region was at the bottom of the sea (remember me mentioning that in the last two entries?). The gypsum below the sea hardened and rose out of the sea 70 million years ago at approximately 6:17PM (ok, maybe sometime close to that). Now there are no rivers to carry out the gypsum so the white sand dunes remain.
I drove through the park and climbed/walked along some of the dunes. I had a beach chair in the car so I sat out on top of one of the dunes and did some reading in the middle of this desert.
In the afternoon I drove 192 miles to stay in Lordsburg, New Mexico. In the evening I visited Shakespeare Ghost town. This town had grown in 1870 to 3,000 people who were on their way to California. Now with me there it had a population of one person on his way to California!
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