Day 03

The day began in Las Cruces NM, which is about 45 miles north of El Paso.  After yesterday's exhausting adventure (exhausting for me), the plan today was to have a couple of “shorter” hikes and a lot of driving - about 6 hours in the car excluding excursions.  We needed to get from the southern part of New Mexico to the northern part of the state, and we were not taking the most direct route.

First, we drove due east from Las Cruces to White Sands National Monument; the drive to the park was only about 52 minutes and we got an early start.  Last August, a French couple died of dehydration on the same hike we were taking.  It is a tragic story; they took what some would consider to be an adequate amount of water, but it was very hot and they gave most of the water to their 9-year-old son who survived.  It was much cooler this time of year, but we carried three times as much water as we needed.

White Sands is like a giant sand box filled with fine white sugar. The park is adjacent to the White Sands Missile Range, and they will periodically close the park and nearby roads for about 3 hours when they are testing rockets.  Had we come tomorrow, the park would have been closed for part of the day for testing.

We took the Alkali Flat Trail, which is 5 miles and marked by dozens of orange tipped poles placed within sight of each other.  You climb dunes and go from one pole to another.

Because of our early start, the park was fairly empty.  We passed only two couples on our hike.  It is stunning out there... the gypsum sands cover 275 square miles of desert.  Some of the dune climbs have you scrambling to stay upright as you slide backwards with each step up.  Life is sparse in the dunes, but it is there in between dunes on the desert floor. Temps had warmed to the mid-50's - perfect for strenuous hiking.

From White Sands, it was a 20 minute drive up to Alamogordo, NM.  Personally, I really like Alamogordo (Spanish for fat cottonwood).  The city is about 20 square miles (roughly the size of Bermuda) and has a population of about 30,000.  We stopped briefly at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.  I had been before with Angela and a complete visit would take several hours. We limited our tour to the outdoor exhibits.  There are about a dozen of them (mainly small rockets including the remains of a German V2) and it is free.  Speaking of German rockets, there is a large contingency of Germans in the area that are associated with the nearby air force base.

This is the remains of a V2 rocket that was tested at the White Sands Missile Range.

Here's a (questionably) interesting fact about Alamogordo.  In urban legend, the Alamogordo landfill was the supposed burial site for millions of unsold copies of Atari video games in 1983.  In particular, copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history and often cited as one of the worst video games ever released, were buried and covered in concrete.  In 2014, an archaeological team was given permission to dig at the landfill and uncovered evidence of the Atari dumping.  The disposal of games (perhaps not millions, though) was coincident with the North America Video Crash of 1983, during which revenues of video game sales fell from approximately $3.2 BILLION in 1983 to about $100  million in 1986. Aren't you glad you now know that?

After our brief visit to the museum, we grabbed an early Mexican lunch at locals' favorite, Margo's. Not much to look at from the outside, but the food and service were good... would definitely recommend it.

About 20% of the drawings are similar to the one shown above.

From Alamogordo, we headed north on US 54 to the Valley of the Fires Recreational Area, which was about an hour away.  However, about halfway up US 54 is a turn-off for Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.  It is a park dedicated solely to prehistoric rock art and one of the few sites giving visitors such direct access to petroglyphs (prehistoric rock drawings or carvings). The number and concentration of petroglyphs here make it one of the largest and most interesting petroglyphs sites in the Southwest. We had plenty of time, so we took the 5 mile diversion to the site.  BTW, this is not a National Park, National Forest or National Monument; it is a "site" administered by the Bureau of Land Management.  The site is not very big, and they actually encourage visitors to leave the trail to see the petroglyphs.  We took the one-mile hike and then ventured out into the rock fields.

We didn't stay terribly long at Three Rivers.  Back on US 54, we continued heading north to the Valley of the Fires Recreational Area, which is adjacent to the Malpais Lava Flow - it covers about 125 square miles.  The eruption that caused the lava flow occurred about 5,000 years ago.  There is a short hike in the park that takes us out on the lava flows and shows how nature has found a way to thrive in this inhospitable environment.  However, on the drive up to Valley of the Fires, the temperature dropped from the mid-60's to the mid-40's over just a few miles.  We could see the weather coming in from the east.  By the time we arrived at the recreational area, it was cloudy and blowing a storm.  We were still in shorts, and I was freezing.  Briggs claimed he wasn't.  We hiked around minimally and then jumped back in the car.  Up the road, we pulled over at a more protected location to scout the lava flows.

We were now headed due west, basically just north of the White Sands Missile Range.  We connected with I-25 and headed north towards Albuquerque.  Before reaching Albuquerque, we turned west on SR6 and joined I-40 east of Grants - our destination for the evening.  We pulled into a Denny's for dinner, and it was snowing.  Mainly a mixture of ice and rain.  There were two Harley riders camping out in the Denny's with little enthusiasm for returning to the road.  Briggs isn't much for sweets, but we split a Bacon, Maple Syrup Sundae - available for a limited time only.  Our waitress was a bit unnerved that someone had actually ordered it; however, it was actually pretty good.

We made it to our motel at a very reasonable time.  Due to the weather, our original plans for tomorrow may change.