WHITE SAND OASIS IN MIDDLE AMERICA

Squint over the water gently lapping onto fine white sand, over the windswept royal blue waves. Beneath the grassy hillside on the horizon, you might see spindly cottonwood trees sticking out of the water and rows of sunflowers flapping in the breeze.

If you were dropped here, you might guess that you were in the Outer Banks of North Carolina or on Oregon’s high-duned Pacific Coast. Maybe a Sardinian grotto.

Even if you’d arrived here by road, you might still believe that you’d been somehow transported to one of those heralded locales—until you spotted the F-150s and RVs lined up at the water’s edge like beach