State(s): New Mexico
Link: https://www.nps.gov/whsa/index.htm
Days: 1
Month: December/January
Hotel: The Classic Desert Aire Hotel, El Paso Airport Entrada Hotel (El Paso airport)
Hikes: 3 = 3.6 miles
National Park Visit Order: #20
Ice Cream: Pistachioland
For this trip, we explored Big Bend National Park, Rio Grande Wild & Scenic River, Fort Davis National Historic Site, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, and White Sands National Park. We made several other stops along the way too!
Day 0
We were heading from White’s City (Guadalupe Mountains & Carlsbad Caverns National Parks) to White Sands National Park. We had time to make several stops along the way, so that’s what we did!
First up was the International UFO Museum and Research Center. It was a bit odd and interesting at the same time.
We continued on our journey and saw a roadrunner! We made it to Oso Grill for lunch. I had New Mexico’s choice green chile cheeseburger with the sauce on the side. Colleen had the green chile chicken quesadilla. The food was amazing; the burger had perfect flavors, I even used the chipotle ranch sauce and I don’t like ranch. All the flavors went perfectly together. To top it off, we split a homemade chocolate lava cake with a scoop of ice cream.
Across the street was Smokey Bear Historical Park, so we had to stop there. It was very cool! We learned a lot about Smokey and wildfires. We never knew Smokey was an actual bear! Highly recommend stopping here.
Next up was Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. Another very cool stop. We only had about 20 minutes to explore so we quickly checked things out. There was so much rock art!
We almost didn’t go to Pistachioland, but it was our next stop and we’re glad we checked it out. We did the tour with AJ – she was a great tour guide. We learned about the pistachio farm, the grapes, even about the ice cream they make! The tour was quick and informative. We had to try their pistachio ice cream, it was very good! They had various flavors of pistachios, we took our time sampling – that was fun too!
Then we headed to White Sands Visitor Center. We got a stamp & a few items. The visitor center and surrounding buildings have an awesome look to them. We quickly started heading to the back of the park. Where the road makes a V, we headed to the left, to watch what we could see of the sunset – it was cloudy but still pretty.
We then checked in to our hotel – The Classic Desert Aire Hotel. Once settled in, we went to 4 different places for food before finally finding one that was open. It was a bit odd – a tourist town on New Years Eve and nothing was open. We finally settled on La Hacienda for dinner. The food was ok.
Day 1
When we woke up, it was raining a little bit. We headed over to the cafe by the hotel lobby. The hotel gave us a voucher that included certain food items for breakfast from the cafe. There were a variety of options so we had no issues finding something included. On our way out, our hotel allowed us to borrowed a sled so we didn’t have to buy one, more to come on that.
Our first trail was the Playa Trail, and easy 0.5 mile out and back trail. There wasn’t any water due to the time of the year but it was a nice leisurely stroll.
Next up was the Dune Life Nature Trail, an easy 1.1 mile loop. It was a nice short trail. Katie the kit fox took us on a nice adventure telling us about animals in the park and what they eat.
We had a sled but didn’t have wax for it so we headed to the visitor center to get some wax (since they were now open). There was one left behind we were able to use so we didn’t have to buy one, which was nice.
Our final trail was the Backcountry Camping Trail, an easy 2 miles loop. It was a bit confusing – you have to keep an eye out for the tall posts to follow the loop. Having an offline map also helped us stay on the loop. The loop takes you across open sand and gives you several different view points to checkout the landscape.
After that trail, we drove the Dunes Drive loop and stopped at one of the parking lots. We took our sled out, waxed the bottom of it, and went sledding! It was a lot of fun! After several attempts at going as far as we could in the sand, we headed back to the hotel to drop off the sled and wax.
We tried going to a couple local places for lunch and they ended up all being closed. We settled on Sonic. We always try to go to local places, especially when traveling, but there wasn’t much open. I had the green chile burger, so at least it was something more unique to that area!
Our craving for ice cream was in full force so we headed back to Pistachioland for another round of pistachio ice cream. Yum!
We settled into our hotel – a Best Western, El Paso Airport Entrada Hotel, then headed to Track One for dinner. This place was very cool – three railroad cars turned into a restaurant. We both had boneless wings (what they are known for). I had half sweet and half BBQ. Colleen got spicy lemon paper and the other half buffalo. We shared a side of fries, which turned out to be way too much food. Everything was really good & the wings were really big.
Once we were back to our hotel, we headed to the meditation room that had 2 Infinity Evo Max 4d massage chairs. It was a perfect way to end our adventures in Texas and New Mexico; so relaxing.
