All tagged Unique

White Sands National Park

Most “normal” sand dunes are made of grains of quartz and feldspar, but these are not your average dunes. Comprised of gypsum crystals (the mineral in drywall), these unusual white dunes sparkle under the desert sun. At over 200 square miles, White Sands is by far the largest of its kind in the world.

White Sands is the newest U.S. national park.

Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park

These massive dunes of red-tinted sand are a quite the geologic coincidence. It may not be terribly obvious to people who have spent time around “normal” quartz sand dunes that those in Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park are not the same color, but they are. The pink hued sand here is fairly typical of northern Arizona and Southern Utah, but it is normally not collected into towering dunes.