...for everyone's favorite adventure:  a trip to the dentist!  Yes, Carrie woke up in the middle of the night with a toothache.  EVER so much fun.  We found a dentist good enough to fit me in this morning.  The upshot is not great:  there is no abcess and no infection (that is good), but there is a crack in the tooth (that is bad).  That means I need a crown to fix it, and obviously I can't get that done in a day or even in a week.  The dentist did prescribe bigger doses of over-the-counter painkiller than I would have been willing to take on my own initiative, so that much is good.  More bad news:  my own dentist can't fit me in until the 31st.  You'd think if a stranger could fit me in in two hours 2500 miles from home, my own dentist could do better than 9 days after we get back. Alas.  I shall be finishing the trip doped up on Ibuprofin, and everyone cross your fingers that the altitude changes in the airplanes do not wreak havoc.

While waiting for the dental appointment, we took a short visit at McGinn's Pistachioland, a Route 66-worthy attraction (read tourist trap) a few miles up the road.   I have not mentioned that we have been in nut country for several days:  pecans and pistachios are grown here by the ton, and we have passed many orchards. A major advertising claim to fame is that Pistachoiland has "The World's Largest Pistachio."  Well, it would be hard to argue: theirs is 30' tall.  See photos. We did buy some pistachios, skipping the Lemon-Lime, Green Chili, Red Chili, and Cocoa Roasted varieties in favor of plain roasted and salted.  I won't be cracking my teeth down on any of those any time soon.

Later, having dealt with the dentist, we found a little local burger joint for lunch (I had a milkshake--liquid lunch).  Tim says the burger is better than, say, McDonald's, but not really anything to write home about, so I won't write home about it.  VERY popular with locals, who arrived one after the other, either to pick up carry-out orders they phoned in ahead or to order without looking at a menu.

From there we headed down to White Sands National Park. This park preserves about half of a 275-square mile gypsum dune field.   The sand gets formed because rocks up on the mountains have threads of gypsum running through them.  When it rains, the gypsum dissolves and runs down the mountain in the water, which then gathers in the basin.  The wind then roils it around and breaks it up into tiny crystals.  The sand is really soft--the park film says "like talcum powder."  I don't know it's all that soft, but I picked up a handful and I can tell you it is very soft, not like tiny rocks.  

Side note:  gypsum, as they tell you nowhere in the park, is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula CaSO 4·2H2O. So there.

The park has different areas--there are large expanses of nothing but the white sand, and then there are large expanses of heavily overgrown sand.  Where there is no plant life, the wind is blowing the sand at a rate of about 28-30 miles a year.  Where there is plant life, the wind has allowed the plants to sprout and stabilize the ground. The particular area here is capable of supporting the life it does because the water table is very high: during large parts of the year it's only a foot below the sandy surface, and in the rainy season, basins called "playa" fill up with water.   Brine shrimp, toads, and tadpoles appear out in the middle of the desert. We're not here at the right time of year for that, but it sounds really cool.

We did the park drive and took a couple of short hikes, and then Tim did a longer one.  I've posted a good many pictures of the general scenery; it's amazing how the vast expanses of stark white flatten everything out.  This is especially true, I think, because the sun was not out, and the overcast prevented us from seeing the contours of the sand dunes.

The main reason for timing our visit here as we did is that tonight is a full moon, and the park stays open late so visitors can admire the moonlight on the white sand.  It rains on only about 20% of the days of the year, and it looks like tonight is one of those.  Even if it doesn't rain, the overcast is very heavy, and we're not going to see the moon at all, I don't think.  Probably not going to make the 15-mile drive back down there.  Too bad!  Today was a more unlucky day than we had yesterday.

Still:  the park is beautiful and it was interesting to see the dunes and the variety of plant life which manages to survive.  We did not see any of the wildlife, which have evolved to have lighter colors which protect them from predators and which help repel the heat of summer.

I had soup for dinner; the painkillers are definitely helping, but I am not interested in chewing anything much just now.  We debated going back to the park, but until we can find the moon, there really isn't a reason to do so.  Tomorrow we head to Carlsbad Caverns, a place, it is rather hard to believe, we have never managed to visit before.