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White Sands National Monument

Tour of the Deserts | Honeymoon Adventure
Thursday & Friday, March 16-17, 2017

After spending the previous day driving from Tucson to Alamogordo and visiting the Three River Petroglyph Site, it was time to finally visit White Sands National Monument. I have long wanted to visit these white gypsum sand dunes located in the Tularosa Valley of southern New Mexico and made sure that this park would be a stop on our Honeymoon Adventure. We headed over to the Visitor Center early and arrived about 30 minutes before they opened at 9:00am so we could get one of the ten permits available for camping in the dunes that night. I’m glad we got there early, because when we arrived there were already four groups ahead of us waiting in line to get permits. One of the guys waiting in line told us that they had tried to get a permit the day before at noon and were told that the permits were all gone shortly after they opened because of Spring Break.

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Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

Tour of the Deserts | Honeymoon Adventure
Wednesday, March 15, 2017

After spending a nice evening at Saguaro National Park it was time for another day of driving. This time we would be heading further east into the Chihuahuan Desert of New Mexico. It was a pretty uneventful drive through a new area of the country for both of us. We arrived in Alamogordo just in time to check into our hotel and then we continued driving north through the Tularosa Valley so we could visit the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.

Saguaro National Park

Tour of the Deserts | Honeymoon Adventure
Tuesday, March 14, 2017

While we were in Phoenix I had hoped that we would’ve had enough time to visit the Superstition Mountains, but unfortunately that was just not in the cards this time. We will definitely have to come back on a future trip and make sure we have enough time to spend there. Since we decided to skip the Superstitions, we slept in a little later than usual on Tuesday morning and then left for Tucson later in the morning. After the two hour drive we would be spending the remainder of the day at Saguaro National Park. I’m not going to lie, I was pretty excited about finally seeing a saguaro cactus in real life! Since I spend most of my ‘desert time’ on the Colorado Plateau, I had never been down to the Sonoran Desert where they are found. I was not disappointed!

Grapevine Canyon Petroglyphs

Tour of the Deserts | Honeymoon Adventure
Monday, March 13, 2017

After spending the night along the Colorado River at the Colorado Belle Hotel & Casino in Laughlin, Diane and I got up early and headed up to Christmas Tree Pass in the Newberry Mountains for a sunrise drive. Today would mostly be a driving and resting day for us, but we did manage to find a little time in the morning to visit the petroglyphs found in Grapevine Canyon before driving to Phoenix.

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Mojave National Preserve

Tour of the Deserts | Honeymoon Adventure
Friday – Sunday, March 10-12, 2017

After leaving Death Valley on Friday afternoon we headed south to the end (the beginning for us) of the Mojave Road, which starts just outside of the Mojave National Preserve near Camp Cady, which isn’t too far off of I-15 east of Barstow. I had planned and hoped to drive the entire Mojave Road this trip, but again, thanks to the recent rains, that would prove to be impossible. By the end of the weekend we would end up driving most of the road in different segments, but not the entire route. That just means I will have to plan another trip here in the future!

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Category: Touring

White Sands National Monument

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

Saguaro National Park

Grapevine Canyon Petroglyphs

Mojave National Preserve