White Sands and Billy the Kid Territory – an Awesome Overnight Trip from Santa Fe

by Susie Morgan with photos by Piar Marks

Day 1

White Sands, New Mexico is an inspiring place of huge, bright white, ever-changing dunes and graded roads made of gypsum – not sand. Designated as a National Monument, it is operated by the National Parks Service. It encompasses 275 square miles of desert and is popular with photographers, hikers, sand sliders, bird watchers and horseback riders. Santa Fe is an ideal horse destination because it has so many great trip options from a home base of Santa Fe.

Thanks to Jeff Kennedy, Wrangler at Ghost Ranch who provided most of the horses, we hauled down one morning, put the horses up at the Alamogordo Rodeo Grounds pens or box stalls at Copper Penny Ranch, and checked into the Super 8 Motel adjacent to the Rodeo Grounds. As long as no rodeo is going on, the pens are available, but its best to bring sections of chain and locks to secure the pens. Copper Penny Ranch is a full service barn and feed store with excellent overnight horse accommodations. Later that afternoon, a hail storm hit Alamogordo; 16 miles from White Sands. It only lasted a few minutes, but the rains from the nearby mountains brought floods into town for hours.

The best time to ride White Sands for optimal lighting is sunrise and sunset where the sun (and moon on a full moon night) provide a spectacle of shadows, highlighting swirls in the sand and light in the dunes. White Sands can be very hot during the day, but for some reason, gypsum does not hold heat the way sand does. Still, the optimal time to be there is sunrise and sunset and spring and fall are most pleasant.

Our group arrived on a September afternoon anticipating the full moon to be up before sunset. It’s such a popular plan that we anticipated some traffic congestion at the entrance gate where we paid $5 per person or showed our National Parks Senior Pass for free admission for those over 62. The card is good for life, so it’s a fabulous value for entrance into all national parks, preserves and monuments.

There is a special staging area for horse trailers, and the road signs are excellent, so Jeff just keep driving to find the horse parking area. A stray monsoon reminded us of the hail storm earlier. Once Jeff saddled us up, we followed our noses heading out through one of the valleys between the dunes. The valleys provide light to medium sandy footing; climbing the dunes is deeper gypsum and requires more effort to surmount. From the top, we waved to people on tops of other dunes and enjoyed a spectacular sunset through the cloud remnants from the hailstorm earlier in the day.

We rode around the rim of a huge crescent shaped dune noticing that the light was going flat once the sun was completely down, but the moon not yet overhead. We tracked our prints back to the trailers – all of us inspired by the unique landscape the gypsum provided. Consensus was this is a ride we all want to do again.

Day 2

After returning from White Sands to Alamogordo, settling the horses in for the night and cleaning up, we took over the breakfast lounge at the Super 8 Motel, pushed tables together and dragged out beer, wine, salami, cheeses, homemade hummus, assorted nuts and Pepitas, and Fritos (I live for the occasional snack of Fritos). We talked about how magnificent the ride in White Sands had been, and what was to follow tomorrow in Billy the Kids’ stomping grounds in Lincoln County.

This ride is an hour north of Alamogordo near Carrizozo, where we stopped for gas and a pit stop then headed south on 380 to meet the area guide – Matt Midgett – who is also an active member of the local Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Posse and a champion of “At Liberty” horsemanship. He was waiting for us at the assigned spot wearing a stiffly starched “Followed Dream Ranch” shirt. All I can say is he really did follow his dream. Matt left Hollywood 8 years ago, bought some magnificent quarter horses and settled into their New Mexico life of horses and trails.

We counted three horses in his trailer as we followed him to the staging area in the pines and lush grassy meadows that cover this hilly part of New Mexico. Such a stark contrast to the White Sands area from last night. Matt is a solo rider – three horses in the trailer… this should be interesting. The land is typically summer cattle grazing land, but cattle have already been pulled off the lands. Still, much grass remains.

Saddling up 10 horses takes some time. Ghost Ranch Wrangler, Jeff Kennedy, had brought many of the horses we were riding and had his hands full prepping and fitting each horse to rider as expected of the true professional Jeff is. When most of us were mounted, Matt swung up onto his bay mare bareback with a halter, picked up the lead of the roan, and turned the flea bit gray loose. Everyone stopped talking and looked. Matt said, “Don’t worry, Thunder (the flea bit gray) doesn’t bother the other horses, he leads the ride”. And lead he did.

Through meadows and over hills and through a stream, Thunder set the pace. If he picked the wrong direction, Matt would whistle and Thunder simply changed course to match our route. While some horses in our group took note, none misbehaved due to Thunder on the loose.

The ride could’ve been longer, but we had set a schedule for a two hour ride to give us plenty of time to haul back to Santa Fe. Checking us often to make sure everyone was comfortable, Matt and Jeff kept an eye on us all. I suspect Matt could have entertained us for days on different trails in Lincoln County.

Back at the trailers, unsaddling all the horses and getting them watered was priority one. Priority two was a picnic lunch which a couple of people set up quickly under a shady pine. After a good lunch of munchies, we packed everyone up, loaded all the horse trailers, and parted company with Matt and Thunder – but not before we had a few photo ops to remember such a fine day and ride combined with a remarkable horse experience.