White Sands National Park

After our long drive through Texas, we were unbelievably excited to explore New Mexico. Our trip to the state began with seeing some old friends. One of the best parts of our travels is seeing old friends that we would likely only ever connect with again on social media.

On our way out of Las Cruces, we made a day trip to White Sands National Park. When we first drove in, we were a bit underwhelmed by the dirty-looking sand dunes near the visitor's center. It wasn't until we drove 20 minutes into the park that we realized we were in an incredible place.

That day trip turned into a week spent at the park.

It also got a lot of sand in the van.

We managed to do all of the hikes (I think there were only 5) in the park. Most of which were just aimless wanderings through the dunes with occasional trail markers to let you know how close or far you were to the missile range next door.

Our spontaneous extended stay in the White Sands was one of the first eye-opening moments of this lifestyle for me. That week we watched dozens of families unpack out of a minivan with North Carolina plates to walk around the dunes for 30 minutes before buying a tiny bottle of sand from the gift shop. If the kids were lucky, they also got to rent some sleds and slide down the dunes for a few hours. But inevitably, the families would pack back into their cars and continue their cross-country spring break road trip. It sounds exhausting.

Because of our lifestyle, we have the freedom to make our stay as long (or short) in an area as we want. We always roughly plan our route with a general timeline, but it's not until we reach and area that we can decide if it's someplace we'd like to spend more time in, or just pass through. Overall, I think it's what makes this lifestyle sustainable long-term. We don't have to see things as quickly as possible or cut our time short in one area just to make it to our next hotel 4 hours away.

Basically, we're turtles: Traveling around with our home on our back, moving very, very slowly. :)