Solar Eclipse- White Sands

We were lucky enough to have another grand adventure with the Hays! They flew down to Sahuarita, then we road tripped to Texas to see the April 8 2024 solar eclipse. We first met the Hays when we moved into the Sahuarita Ward back in 2013. Four families got together to form an FHE group- the Hays, Halls, Baggs, and Bloods (aka H2B2). We were able to see the Halls in Sahuarita (they still live here) and the Baggs in Texas! It would have been cool to get all four families in the same room, but we settled for seeing the whole group in a one week period. 

We picked the Hays up on Thursday afternoon. They got to drive by their old house and meet up with friends at the park, then we had dinner with the Halls. 

During our FHE days, Colby and tiny baby Alice were the only kids. Now look at this pack!

Kiddos playing roll-a-creature

A  feature of this trip that we were very excited about was that we rented RVs. The Hays rented a class C RV off of outdoorsy.com, and we rented the Flythe's camper van. It was very educational comparing the two during our trip. The Hay's big RV had more amenities, but had TONS of problems (read on, dear reader, for a thrilling account of the various vehicle problems). The camper van was a 12 passenger van that our friend had removed the back two rows from and welded in queen size bunk beds with huge storage drawers underneath. Most camper vans only have 4 seatbelts- the Flythmobile has 9, plus two five point harnesses you can use to belt yourself onto the beds. The Class C RV had a bathroom, kitchen, and water tanks- but it was SO LOUD while driving it around. It rattled really badly and got terrible gas mileage on top of the reliability issues. 

I digress. We decided to rent RVs because I thought it would be interesting to try out not having to set up and take down tents like we usually do, and also because we could have more flexibility in our schedule. There were a couple of nights that we drove past nightfall and were able to park and sleep with minimal hassle. That ended up being a huge advantage for this particular trip since we were determined to find a cloud-free area to watch the eclipse. 

On Friday morning, we loaded up and drove 5 hours to White Sands National Park in New Mexico. This stop was an absolute hit. I'm determined to come back for a two day stay sometime. 

The visitor's center was a really cool building. We only scratched the surface of looking through the stuff here. We were hoping to make it to PistachioLand before it closed, so we could only stay for a few hours. 

We drove around a bit and found a parking area with what looked like good hills for sledding. It was a super windy day. It was sunny and probably in the 70's. I was worried the sand would be hot, but it was delightfully cool and shockingly soft. The dunes are actually is finely powdered gypsum. 

Isaac's immediate reaction upon encountering the sand was to HULK SMASH

So majestic

The white sand went on forever. It was a surreal and awesome landscape. 

That's Aaron in the distance, chasing after the tinier dot which was Isaac sprinting happily into the unknown. 

This picture does a decent job of showing off how steep our selected cliff was. You had to WORK to get those sleds back up.

I was a bit underwhelmed with the sleds. Even with the wax and the steepest cliff we could find, they wouldn't go very fast. 

Handsome guy with a sled alert

Jumping off the cliff was a popular activity. You have to jump forward, knowing that you will free fall down into the soft sand. Aaron is shockingly good at doing long jumps into the open air. He was the undisputed jump champion. 

Mining into the sides of the cliffs was also a hit. It made sugar sand waterfalls as we dug around. 

We played in this one spot for around 3 hours. The adults down to Isaac all were plenty entertained that whole time. There's a few short hikes that I would like to check out when we visit again. 

Elliot was determined to dig a super deep hole. 

After the whole was the length of his arm, he switched to digging with his leg. 

Naturally, we decided to bury him when his leg got stuck in his impressively deep tunnel. 

We were originally planning to sleep near White Sands to maximize our time there, but the weather forecast for eclipse day was looking really bad for the Fort Worth area. At this point in the trip, we were thinking that we might have to drive further northeast to Missouri to catch some clear skies. We decided to drive a few hours further on Friday and arrive in Fort Worth on Saturday night instead of Sunday afternoon. It was back on the road for us!