Las Cruces, New Mexico

We travelled from San Antonio to New Mexico. The scenery changed from low scrub forest to flat tumble weeds to hilly arid slopes to beautiful arid mountains. It does my heart good to see the mountains again, personally I was getting a little tired of flat land. We made it to Las Cruces (just past El Paso, TX) in 2 days from San Antonio. At one point the highway goes right along the Mexican border. We are so close to the border that we are planning to take a trolley to Cuidad Juarez in Mexico tomorrow.
Today we went to White Sands National Monument. We were really happy to see that it was close to our campsite. I had pretty much given up seeing it so it was a special treat. We had lots of fun surfing and sliding on the dunes. There was a large group of MP's about to be deployed to Afganistan. They gave the kids saucers for sliding so they had lots of fun. The sand is as white as snow and it just so beautiful to see the different shapes of the sand dunes. The sand is gypsum which comes from the mountains in the streams and since there are no rivers or streams out of the valley it stays there when the water evaporates.
We love the camp we are staying at so much we are staying here till Monday. We get a free breakfast every morning....that will save us on cereal and milk!! The breakfast is awesome, muffins, waffles, eggs, fruit, juice and cereal. Then on Friday it is margarita night...free margaritas yahoo!! There is also a free newspaper every morning so Richard can get his news fix.
It is now Sunday. On Friday we went to Juarez. It is a big, smoggy, dirty and crowded city but we loved it. We took a cab to the main market instead of doing the trolley like we had planned. At the market we were of course pestered to no end. Catherine was interested in cowboy hats but we didn't find any we loved and we plan to be in Mexico by next week so the need wasn't immediate. We then walked around town looking for boots for the kids but we couldn't find anyone that hablo English. Finally we found a store that sold boots and spoke English so we stopped in and bought boots for the girls and Richard. You can't beat the prices in Mexico.
On Saturday we headed over to Brown's Field to take in the annual Balloon Rally. It was so beautiful to see all the hot-air balloons up in the sky and lifting off. There were 70 balloons all together.
The kids are a little laid up right now with bad colds with a cough so we skipped church today. Tomorrow we are heading into Arizona.