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Please see the February 11, 2001 entry in Flat Teddy's Journal.

These two views of White Sands National Monument show you just a small portion of the huge area covered by these sand dunes. The dunes are composed entirely of gypsum, which is rarely seen in the form of sand anywhere in the world. Over millions of years, the gypsum was dissolved from rocks in the surrounding mountains and washed down into this valley, the Tularosa Basin. Normally, the gypsum would stay dissolved in the water that is carrying it and would be washed out to sea. But no river drains out of this basin. Through eons, rivers have flowed into the basin, the water has evaporated, and the gypsum has been deposited to pile up in these dunes that cover more than 275 square miles (71,225 hectares) of desert floor. The prevailing winds blow the dunes into constantly changing shapes and move them gradually northeastward.

Plants like those in the first picture are either covered up by the rapidly advancing dunes or are forced to grow quickly to stay on top of the dune while keeping their roots anchored firmly in the soil beneath the dune. In the movie at the visitors' center I saw the leaves of a thirty-foot-high cottonwood tree sticking up out of the top of a dune. The tree stayed alive down through the middle of the dune because enough leaves were exposed to the sunshine. The yuccas in the first picture have roots that are ten to twelve feet long to extend down to the ground where they can get moisture to keep the cacti alive. The dune would advance right over the road, but the park service keeps the road cleared of the sand. In the second picture you can see how small my motor home appears, as I'm looking down from the top of a thirty-foot-high (9.1-meter-high) dune. The best part of taking the second picture was the "skiing" I did down the slope of the dune to get back to the motor home. People are allowed to play on the dunes as long as they don't trample on the plants.

It was a chilly day, with threatening dark clouds. As I drove out of the park the clouds opened up, and I got to see the rare phenomenon of rainfall in the desert. Was I just imagining that the plants looked very happy?

These buildings in Mesilla, just a few miles south of Las Cruces, date back to the early 1850s when this town was founded. By the time the Butterfield Overland Trail mail route was established in 1858, with a stage stop in Mesilla, the town was the largest in the southern part of New Mexico Territory, which also included the area now known as Arizona. At that time nearby El Paso and Las Cruces were very small villages.

The first picture shows a long building that begins at one corner of the central square of the old town and extends along the side of a street that branches off the square. The building has been restored to its 1850s appearance, and as you can see, a cafe is situated in one part of it. We'd have to imagine the street as dust and dirt to begin to get the true picture of what the town would have looked like.

The second picture is of an original building facing the central square of Mesilla. The sign hanging to the left of the door says:

"This building which dates from 1850 once housed the capitol of Arizona and New Mexico. Later it was the courthouse in which Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced to hang."