White Sands, New Mexico

With a few days to ourselves in New Mexico, we took a short road trip to one of the state's most fascinating landscapes - White Sands National Monument.  The majestic white sand dunes are made of a mineral called gypsum and are formed through a crazy geological process that I can't pretend to explain, but I could at least appreciate the aesthetic beauty of it all.  This unique place, with its own unique ecosystem is so large that it can apparently be seen from space.

We took two evenings here and I discovered a love for minimal desert photography.  Both evenings, when the sun began to set, the wind died down and the horizon slowly tinged into subtle pastels as the shadows grew long.  The desert presents a minimalism and requires an appreciation of each element in your path - each plant, each texture, each curve of a dune.  I could have photographed this landscape for several more days if I had the chance and these photos are now among my favorites.

Small sites in New Mexico

We recently returned to Uganda after about 6 weeks in the states, jumping all over America once again for all kinds of different purposes.  Between this and that, we had a few spare days and we took them for ourselves, for a real family vacation.  We tend to travel a lot, but it is hardly ever just to get away or site-see, so these few days offered us that opportunity.

We drove from Albuquerque, New Mexico to White Sands National Monument, but stopped in the quirky little town of Truth or Consequences for a couple of nights.  There wasn't anything particularly striking in the area beyond the natural hot springs, and that was just fine with us because we mostly just wanted to relax and be together.  We did drive through a wildlife refuge on the way there and stop by a petroglyph site on the return trip, both semi-interesting stops to break up the trip.  Besides our couple of days at White Sands, which I'll feature soon, it was all quite uneventful.  And sometimes uneventful is just what you need.