White Sand really are white

Hi, Thelma here.

For once our staff took us with them when they went out to see a place. That place was White Sand National Monument. Actually they didn't have a choice. They were able to drive the bus on a 16 mile loop through the sand dunes. And were the bus goes, we go.

I now understand why humans wear sunglasses. The sands were so white and bright that my eyes could hardly stand it. Of course my sister Louise and I have very sensitive eyes.

I wanted to get out and roll in the sand. But Loren told me, "No!. Besides, it's not really sand".

Well that just shows how much he knows. Sharon read to me from the brochure that it is a very special kind of sand, made of gypsum. The common mineral gypsum is rarely found as sand because it it easily soluble in water. But here in the desert, water is rarely found. So the gypsum remains as sand.

Any way I won't bore you any more with science class. Here are some of the pictures. Enjoy.

Sharon and Loren climbed up one of the dunes and took a picture of the bus.
You can't really see me, but I'm standing on the dinning room table, looking out the middle window.

Yes in the desert you still need a warm jacket.

It is hard to get a good perspective of size from a photo. In most of these photos we were in the middle of the dunes, and you can not see were they end in any direction. They cover about 275 square miles. And the dunes are moving North East by as much as twenty feet per year. They are not very tall, maybe two stories tall.

The desert is a truly beautiful place

Hi again. This is Thelma. Sharon and Loren went "walk-about" in the desert. They left Louise and I alone in the RV. They had all the fun, we had another boring day. We did have a great view out the window. They told us all about their adventurous "walk-about" when they returned. Below are the pictures, and their story.

This is a picture of the trail at a point about a quarter of the way up.

As you can see, it was an easy walk. NOT! In place the trail was easy.

But many places were steep and rocky.

This is the canyon wall. It is very steep, almost vertical. The canyon is about a mile long. The wall of the canyon ( in fact the entire Kofa Mountain range) is the remains of a series of volcanos that blew there stack million of years ago. The rock is rhyolite, very hard but brittle.

The weather was cool. Part way up we stopped for a breather and to take

a drink from the water we carry with us every place we go. The desert will'

not forgive those who get thirsty. As you can see the trail was well marked

and easy to follow, but made of loose broken stone that made for difficult

walking.

This picture is from about half way up the canyon. You can see the ribbon of dirt road that winds and bumps it way for seven miles back to the paved road. Then another 18 miles back to Quartzsite and the RV. We are standing at about 300 feet above the floor of the desert. We have to climb another 200 feet up, and another quarter of a mile into the canyon before we can see the palm trees.

This is what all the effort was about. The sign point to a side canyon.
And up there is 40 palm trees. This is one of only a few places were
palm trees grow native in Arizona. In is thought that they may be the last
remnants of a grove that was growing here during the last ice age when the
climate was much more tropical. The palms are about 20 feet tall. They are
very high up the side canyon. We did not try to actually reach them.

On the way down I stopped to explore a cave. Sharon kept yelling at me that

I was going to wake a sleeping bear. Not likely. A Mountain Lion, maybe.

The cave was about 20 feet deep and probably a rock hound miners dig.

The last four picture give you an idea just how beautiful the desert can be.