White Sands National Park | New Mexico

You’ve probably seen pictures or videos of this National Park before and never realized it was a real place you could visit! White Sands National Park has been the backdrop of several movies and music videos, such as the Transformers movie.

I visited White Sands National Park in August 2022 and it was an amazing trip! Afterward, I learned there are different activities offered throughout the year, so now I want to come back and explore even more!

Getting There | Transportation Options

We visited White Sands National Park during a trip to El Paso, Texas. We had rented a car for our weekend trip so we drove about 1.5 hours to White Sands National Park from El Paso.

There are other places to stay that are closer, such as Alamogordo and Las Cruces, but the 1.5 hour drive from El Paso went by pretty quickly! The White Sands National Park does charge a small visitor fee that depends on your group and the number of visits (although we get to attend for free thanks to our America the Beautiful pass.

Exploring White Sands National Park

After arriving at the visitor center, we walked around and took pictures with the park sign. Since we had just driven an hour and a half, we were excited to walk around the museum in the visitor center and stretch out our legs.

The museum had great information about the park and, as always, we watched their short film about the park.

After exploring the visitor center, hitting the bathrooms, and taking pictures, we were ready to start exploring! We got back in our car and drove further into the park. A driving road takes you deeper into the park, with various stops and trails along the way.

After driving around, we made our way to the Alkali Flat Trail. This is a five-mile hiking trail that can take about three to five hours. It has beautiful views with endless “sand” and the mountains behind the dunes.

If it weren’t for the orange markers guiding the hiking trail, I could have easily gotten lost in the endless white landscape. There was plenty of wildlife and plants to see while hiking, from lizards skidding across the sand to various clumps of grassy greens.

Though the name of the hiking trail is “Alkali Flat”, this is by no means a flat hiking trail. There were plenty of dunes that were taller than me and one particular dune where I was literally on all fours, trying to climb the dune!

More Activities at White Sands National Park

Some interesting activities we learned about while at White Sands National Park (but were unable to do) were these Lake Lucero and moonlight hiking opportunities! As soon as I heard about the moonlight hike, I immediately wanted to sign up but alas! Our schedule was already jam-packed and had no space for an additional hike.

If you’re interested in a moderate, 1.5-mile hike to explore Lake Lucero or a moonlight hike, you can learn more about both options and upcoming dates at Recreation.gov.

White Sands National Park has a variety of activities across the park, such as driving or cycling options, as well as animal riding, sledding, and hiking. Learn more on the ‘Things to do‘ page (maybe backcountry camping will be allowed again at some point)!

Visitor Center at White Sands National Park

The Visitor Center has a great spot to take a picture with the White Sands National Park sign. It’s near the end of the parking lot and has plenty of space for any group pictures.

For my girlies: the bathrooms at the visitor center were well kept though definitely on the older side of things. Learn more about the Visitor Center.

White Sands National Park was worth every hour of flights and car drives! The endless expanse of sand dunes (gypsum, actually) was truly a sight to see. Even after two years, this trip ranks as one of my highest.

This is a National Park post about
White Sands National Park, New Mexico.

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