New Mexico + West Texas

White Sands National Park has always been on my list of Places To Go, so when the notion of a second annual girl’s trip arose, I immediately suggested this location in southern New Mexico. The park is about an hour from Las Cruces, where we stayed in a tiny, adobe Airbnb, and two hours from El Paso, where we ate our share of Tex-Mex while ogling the fact that Juarez was a stone’s throw away.

Truth be told, before the night preceding our departure, I hadn’t researched much about White Sands outside of the fact that you can rent plastic discs and sled on the dunes to your heart’s delight. We ended up taking a full day to hike in Guadalupe National Park right across the border in Texas, and then headed north again to Carlsbad Caverns. The company, road trip snacks, ridiculous border crossings, and true crime podcasts ended up making the hours we spent driving more fun than we anticipated.