When Grandma Was A Little Girl - #30

Story #30 - White Sands – Rolling down the dunes – the sand tastes yuck!

Imagine what it would be like to play in a huge sand pile that was as tall as your house and even higher!

About 45 minutes from where we lived was a national park. The name of the park was called White Sands National Monument. The sand dunes are natural gypsum. The sand dunes glisten in the sunlight. My parents would pack a picnic lunch and then we would drive out to the national park. They had picnic tables that were bolted to concrete platforms. They had metal tops over them to help keep off the hot sun. The sand was hot on your bare feet, so you didn’t want to stand still very long. Our family loved to go to the dunes! When you dug down two feet the sand was cool and it felt good on your feet and between your toes! We would go at least 4 times during the summer. We could hardly wait to jump out of the car and run up to the top of the sand dune! Then we would run off the top and jump down. We would also roll down the dune. We would dig holes and bury each other up to our necks! It was the best fun! The only time it was not fun was when the wind blew! The wind would start and you had to run and get inside your car. It was a sandstorm. The sand would get into your eyes and they would burn. It would get in your mouth and it tasted awful! You couldn’t see anything. You had to wait until the wind stopped blowing. It usually lasted about half an hour. You could not drive in it because you could not see! Usually if we were on the top of the dunes and we saw in the distance the sand blowing we got out of there as fast as we could! When we went home there was the ‘sand mess’ to clean up! We had to vacuum out the car and shake out all our clothes outside. Sand got into everything! But oh what fun we had!

When we would drive from Tularosa to Alamogordo you could look to the west and see the sand dunes in the far distance. The dunes against the sky made it look like a long ocean wave. When the wind was blowing you could look off into the west where the sand dunes were and you could see the white wisps in the air. We would say, “Boy we’re sure glad we are not out there today!”