White Sands was my original motivation for planning a trip to New Mexico. It's been on my bucket list since becoming a national park in 2019. The park itself is pretty small--it's a small area carved out for public use from the White Sands Missile Range. It's basically one road winding through the dunes with parking at the trailheads and we easily covered everything within one day. 

We drove up into the mountains to the village of Cloudcroft to have lunch. White Sands and Alamogordo sit at about 4000 ft above sea level (Did not realize until it got hard to breathe!) and we drove up all the way to 9000 ft elevatino to get to Cloudcroft. I have to admit I did not expect to have to brake for wild horses running across the road.