After our summer workcation to Colorado and Utah where we visited three National Parks, we became obsessed with seeking out more parks to visit. Our obsession came at a great time too because our oldest daughter just entered 4th grade where you get free entry to all national parks for a whole year! Jaime did some searching and at the top of her wishlist was White Sand National Park in New Mexico. I set up a flight alert for nearby El Paso and a few short weeks later, a deal came up and we grabbed it. We got in late on a Thursday night and crashed immediately in El Paso (interesting side note that it was really cool driving along the Mexican border and seeing all of the lights in Juárez).
Day 1
Friday morning, we woke up and started the day with fancy coffee at a popular place in El Paso called Dutch Bros Coffee. We continued on our way north about an hour and a half to get to White Sands National Park bright and early. We did a nice hike not too far down the main Dune Drive scenic road on a trial called Dune Life Nature Trail. It’s very surreal walking along the tops of giant dunes and white sand in all directions. Next up, we did a shorter hike down the road on the Interdune Boardwalk. Around the boardwalk area, the road itself turns into dunes, and the Dune Drive is really just beginning. You continue driving down the road for a couple miles and the dunes are getting taller with less plant life as you go. At the end of the road where it turns around, the dunes are at their highest and we stopped to take in the very photogenic views at several different spots. Oh yeah, and did I mention that you can buy sleds at the visitor center and go sledding anywhere you want?!? We had a couple false starts where the dunes weren’t steep enough to get enough speed but when we finally found our sweet spot, it was amazing. We went sledding for about two hours before the heat started to be too much, so we drove back and gave away our sleds to arriving tourists.
Around the national park, there is the White Sands Missile Range, and we had planned to stop at the museum there but unfortunately it was closed. There’s not much to see there, though there are some burnt road signs to let you know that missiles were nearby at some point! We stopped in a small town a few miles down the road called Alamogordo and ate a delicious lunch at Fatwood BBQ. After lunch, we continued driving down the highway, took a quick pitstop at PistachioLand for shopping and pictures with the world’s largest pistachio, and made our way to our next step — Roswell!
All of the towns in New Mexico are quite small and seem past their prime, to put it nicely. Roswell was no different. We only really noticed we were approaching because of the GPS and an awesome “Welcome to Roswell” sign with a UFO on it, where we stopped for quick photos. Driving into town, there are scattered murals painted on the sides of buildings. Overall, it wasn’t as much of a tourist destination as I thought it would be. All of the main attractions were within a couple blocks of each other near the main crossroads in town. We started at a store called Alien Zone where we picked up our first kitschy souvenirs and discovered there’s a somewhat nondescript door in the middle of the store that leads to “Area 51”, a place full of various alien displays doing different things. It was super quirky and awesome, and surprisingly well done. There’s even a diner in the back, which wasn’t operating at the time, though I’m not sure if it’s supposed to in non-COVID times.
Next up, we went to a place I read about on Atlas Obscura. Apparently there were a sizable amount of German POWs held in Roswell during WWII (who knew?!). They were tasked with building a retaining wall along a riverbank and had secretly built an Iron Cross out of stone. It was very controversial to the locals (of course), and they tried to destroy it but were not successful. It’s since been deemed POW/MIA Park and there is a piece of the Berlin Wall and a few signs to commemorate the war. Back in town, we went to another alien-themed store called Invasion Station to stock up on more cheesy trinkets and take lots of photo ops with an alien and UFO out front. A few doors down from there, we got even more photos at the UFO-shaped McDonalds and a huge alien holding up the Dunkin’ Donuts sign. We had dinner at Cattle Baron, a somewhat local chain restaurant with a great salad bar, and dessert at Classics Frozen Custard.
Day 2
The next morning, we started with breakfast at the popular Cowboy Cafe. There are not many people around town and even fewer tourists so we were surprised there was a wait. It turned out that was a large football team there so once they wrapped up a lot of waiting tables were able to be seated. The food and service was great, though one of the servers had a gun holstered which made us a bit uncomfortable (welcome to the wild west!). The main attraction in town is the International UFO Museum and Research Center and it was extremely well done, albeit a little dated (like everything else in town). The kids loved reading and hearing about about different UFO sightings and supposed interactions, references in pop culture, etc. Outside, we noticed that all of the lights on lamp posts on the main road had alien eyes on them. Also, leading from the museum to nearby Roswell UFO Spacewalk were little green footprints on the sidewalk. Nice kitschy touches for a kitschy place! We visited the Spacewalk too, and it’s essentially a walk through several rooms full of neon decorations and lit entirely by blacklights. The person running the place was extremely nice and gave out free stickers to the girls. And that was about it for Roswell. The couple hours of shopping and photo ops the night before and the couple hours of entertainment this morning and we had just about seen all there was to do there.
On the way out of town, we decided to get some coffee for the drive. We picked the hilariously named Perk N Jerk (coffee and beef jerky, get it?), which also had high ratings. It was a strange small building and only Jaime went inside. She said it was a good thing she went alone though as there wasn’t room for anyone else. It looked like a messy office, so much so that she asked the person working if she was in the right place. She was and he pointed her to a short menu where she quickly ordered our drinks. The gentleman working made some small talk and when she said we were from Chicago, he genuinely asked why would we be in Roswell. Jaime got our drinks and told me this story in the car. I asked her if she got us any jerky too, and she said there wasn’t any…
From Roswell, we continued our journey south, about two and a half hours to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It’s one of the lessor known national parks but since we’re now determined to visit as many as possible, we thought we’d check it out. The mountain range is beautiful. I can see why the park itself isn’t that popular — there are no roads within the park itself. There’s a nice visitor center just inside and then everything from there is longer trials and backcountry hiking. We took the shortest hike to what’s called The Pinery, which is an 1850s postal service station that was quite large for its time, and is now in ruins.
From there, we drove back north to Carlsbad where we were staying for the night. We had a nice dinner at a counter-service Mexican place called El Charro and then stopped at Milton’s Brewing for drinks afterward. Once checked in to the hotel, we finished off the evening with swimming.
Day 3
Our final morning we had a quick breakfast at the hotel and then drove about 30 minutes south to our third national park of the trip, Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Lydia felt sick from breakfast and we almost had to miss it, but she powered through and it turned into a trip highlight (and her favorite part of the trip!). You zig zag up a mountain road to get there, and then take an elevator 750 feet down back into the mountain to enter the cave. There’s also a natural hike you can do instead of the elevator if time allows (which it didn’t for us). At the underground cave entrance there’s another visitor center and flushable bathrooms, which I found fascinating. About 50 steps onto the cave path, it opens up into a massive grand ballroom, and there are several similar ones all back-to-back along the trail. It’s a self-guided tour so Jaime and Edie took off and did the full trail while Lydia and I took it a little easy and took the second shortcut. The caves themselves are phenomenal. I’ve been to a lot of caves growing up but nothing like this one. The rooms were huge and endless. It was a great way to end the trip. After about an hour in the caves, we drove the final 2 and a half hours to the El Paso airport for an uneventful flight home.