Trek America Day 12 & 13: White Sands & Tombstone

Another long drive to White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.  A monument is a bit like a state park however for an area to be a state park, it must be passed through congress, whereas a monument can ve passed by a President. 
We set up our tents in a lovely campground called Oliver Lee Memorial, then headed off to Walmart for a supermarket sweep for lunch and dinner ingredients. 
Afterwards we drove to the White Sands which was SO MUCH FUN.  At the visitor centre you can buy shallow buckets that you can then use to slide down the sand dunes.  It's funny the ability that sand has to turn us into big kids!!
There were miles and miles of bright white sand dunes, it was pretty spectacular.   We found a big hill and had some races, and generally messed about in the sand, taking silly photos and doing yoga and gymnastics.  Surprisingly the sand is very cool so luckily there's no hot footing it across the dunes like you get on the beach. 
After a couple of hours the sun set and we headed back to camp, via Domino's, nom.
The following morning we packed up (we've become a slick tent packing up machine) and headed onto our next destination, Tombstone in Arizona. 
This place is very weird.  A small town from a bygone era, it's a huge tourist trap but it is very cool.  Wide streets lined with a boardwalk and authentic saloons and shops selling wild wild west tat.  People wander round dressed up as cowboys and saloon girls.  We bought tickets to the OK Corral gun show at $10 each, which was so bad it was good.  A half hour reenactment of the famous Tombstone gun fight where 3 men were killed in 30 seconds.  There was a lot of gunfire and each time they went off I would curse as it was very loud and never failed to make me jump.
We wandered the town a bit but to be honest apart from getting your photo taken dressed as a cowboy or drinking in a saloon there's not much to do, and we had plenty of beer back at camp so we sat in the sun and drank beer for a few hours. 
After dinner we headed out to one of the saloon bars for a drink.  In America they don't measure spirits so my G&T was mostly G.  Fine by me!  I got hit on by a 40 year old truck driver who lived in a trailer park.  Nice to know I've still got it.  
We headed onto a karaoke bar we'd spotted earlier which was filled with old men and women pretending to be cowboys.  They were also all really good at karaoke.  However they were no match for Daniel and I's rendition of Roxanne.  We murdered it.  
This morning we had a bit of a lie in then stopped by the Boothill cemetery, where all the town's cowboys are buried.
We're now on our way to Betty and Rusty's cowboy camp in North Arizona, and after that Monument Valley to stay with the Navajo.  There's no showers or proper toilets for two days, no power and no WiFi. Back to basics! It's also 35° outside, balmy!

Comments

  1. Did we lose a day somewhere? (This post is days 12 & 13 and the last post was days 9 & 10. Where's 11?!) Glad you've got good weather! The sandy place looks brilliant! -x-

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  2. Ha! Well spotted. Was hoping no one would notice! I messed up and repeated day 7! I'll update titles when I'm back :) xxx

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  3. Lol - I'm so slow. I didn't even notice the double 7! -x-

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