It's a long way to Tipperaryiiiiiiiii

It sure is. From Organ Pipe Cactus NM we had planned to travel to White Sands National Park via Fort Bowie, a historic monument re the battles Cochise. Maybe stay a night at Fort Bowie and then carry on through the endless desert. However, Fort Bowie in our imagination had some of that Western appeal, the Indians fighting the US cavalry and all that stuff - and that's what happened some 140 years ago - but today you'll need a lot of imagination for this picture. Sure, the 1.5 mile walk from car park to Fort is nice, nothing to spectacular, on the other hand, what did we expect. The Fort was built with Adobe bricks i.e. non-fired clay bricks and even here it rains every now and then. Have a look yourselves at the remains!

But first things first: We had spent the night before in Willcox, after a long drive from Organ Pipe Cactus NM. Willcox is the biggest town in the area, but still... It's close to nothing there, the middle of nowhere. But.... we woke up at sunrise in the morning after a good night's sleep to the sound of wild geese flying North. Amazing view, there are hundreds of them, wave after wave, coming from a lake nearby that had only formed after heavy rain the week before. It's wave after wave. Beautiful sight!
After breakfast through more desert, a little more desert to Fort Bowie, maybe 2 1/2 hours there, then some more desert, another drive through a little desert...you are getting the picture. Finally, we reach White Sands National Monument late in the afternoon, right at the best time to see it.
White Sands National Monument makes you blink and scratch your head. You've been driving through various kinds of desert for hundreds of miles and all of a sudden your in the snow! At least it looks like it. This really makes up for the long drive past The White Sands Missile Range, 'the birthplace of the NASA ' whatever missile program.

For the night we retire at a nearby RV park in Alamogordo as we will return to White Sands in the morning to enjoy a sunrise breakfast in a desert that really looks like it's made up from snow.