New Mexico
6 - 8 April, 2007

At the other end of White Sands Missle Range is White Sands National Monument, 275 square miles of sparkling white gypsum sand dunes, the world's largest. For an aerial view from Google Earth, click here. Think of a tropical beach and then take away the water. While you're in the dune field, you can go hiking (which I loved!), picnic, go sand sleding and just generally have fun in the sand! Because of all of the rain in the past 6 months or so, a large majority of the park is still closed and flooded (we couldn't do the Heart of the Dunes hike) AND because it was Easter Sunday when we were there, it was pretty busy. However, I loved it!! Now if only there was an ocean near-by . . .

	Medium Large	The remains of Jumbo, a steel container bulit to contain the blast if it failed. It wasn't used and was instead placed at the base of the tower for the blast
	Medium Large	The walls are 6 inches thick. I included a US quarter for scale.
	Medium Large	Looking across the site itself
	Medium Large	The obelisk that marks the exact point of Ground Zero
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	Medium Large	This is all that remains of the tower that held the bomb itself - some concrete and 2 metal pieces of the footing!
	Medium Large	Me with a replica of the Fat Man bomb casing that was tested here and dropped on Nagasaki, Japan
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	Medium Large	Looking back across the site
	Medium Large	Some of the photos on display at the site: The completed bomb before detonation
	Medium Large	0.025 seconds after detonation
	Medium Large	The world's first classic mushroom cloud, 15 seconds after detonation
	Medium Large	Aerial view 28 hours after the explosion The dark area is burnt vegetation
	Medium Large	Inspecting the site months later
	Medium Large	The remains of one of the instrumentation bunkers located 800 yeards from the blast site. They were reinforced with steel and concrete
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	Medium Large	Panorama looking in at the White Sands Missle Range
	Medium Large	One of the wineries was near a farm and ranch museum, complete with Long Horn cattle
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	Medium Large	The gypsum sand of the sand dunes
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	Medium Large	I loved these!! They're pedestals of hardened gypsum held together by the roots of the plant on top of it.
	Medium Large	There's got to be one wierd shot in here somewhere!
	Medium Large	Looking across the dunes towards the San Andres Mountians
	Medium Large	Ripples in the sand
	Medium Large	All I need now is an ocean behind me!
	Medium Large	The Skunkbush Sumac, a non-poisonous relative of poison ivy and poison oak
	Medium Large	It may not look it, but the tree was covered in new, green buds!
	Medium Large	Indians used to make a lemonade type of drink form its berries
	Medium Large	Looking across the dunes and the gypsum-saturated soil flats
	Medium Large	A Rio Grande Cottonwood
	Medium Large	Fossilized pieces of dead tree roots
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	Medium Large	More pedestals . . . I really liked them!
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	Medium Large	A Yucca, the New Mexico state plant
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	Medium Large	This was further in the dune field itself where there was less vegatation.
	Medium Large	For some reason, I really wanted to try and make a sand angel. Ok, so maybe I'm an idiot, but I had fun!
	Medium Large	If you squint, you can make out an angel shape . . . maybe . . .
	Medium Large	Panoramas of the dune field
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