Still Catching Up

We made it to Alamogordo New Mexico, and we are staying at the Elks lodge.  The lodge has 10 full hook up spots, but you must be an Elk to use them.We arrived at the Alamogordo Elks lodge before the rain. When it rained it took no prisoners, it was a short while thankfully. The snow on the mountain was from the storm I just mentioned,
 and the following days it began melting as the temperatures started climbing up to the 70's in the valley, and 50's in the mountains. Now that we've relaxed a little it was time to explore.

The International Space Hall of Fame is located about 10 minutes from downtown Alamogordo, up on a hill, easy to find. We opted to visit just the museum, but there is a planetarium, and theatre. All three can be purchased in a package, or separately. Ham, the first space chimpanzee is buried on the grounds.

He was born in Cameroon, and died at the Carolina Zoological Park in North Carolina. His name is an acronym for Holloman Aero Medical, The military group that trained and prepared him for space.The museum is not just about our space program, but other countries that participated as well. The outside park

    allows one to see and touch actual or mock up machinery. The museum is four stories, starting from the 4th floor, winding down to the 1st floor. There is a video talking about the moon landings explaining what each mission's purpose was and where on the moon they would conduct their business. Moving they show the progression of the U.S. space program. Remember Ham? they have his training unit, space suit, and capsule on display too.

 The chimpanzees were trained to operate a control, if their response was correct they received banana pellets, if the response was incorrect they received a mild shock. On another level they had various rocket engines for the many rockets and missiles the program used. I won't bore you with all my engine pictures... however, they had one outside the museum and I was thinking it might be a nice upgrade to the current diesel in the truck, what do you think, too big? Might take some modifications.
Moving down another floor you enter the world of science fiction. The entire floor is dedicated to Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek, and a few spin off movies like Guardians of the Galaxy. They have a functioning
transporter room, however it is not FDA certified, and no telling how you will arrive at point "B", or what you will look like when you get there. As you can see it was not certain where my
pictures would end up on this page.

If you have never been around rockets and missiles taking off, they offer the opportunity to feel the sensations of five types of rockets. The way they provide the experience is through what they call the "Rumbler", and is achieved through sound and vibration. An unwitting soul, like myself
stands on a metal plates in front of two very large speakers, selects the rocket one wants to experience, an enjoy the experience.

The most exhausting part of the museum is wandering through the gift shop with 4,000 (exaggerated) other people looking for the perfect nothing to take home.

The following day, which was rainy and windy, we took a drive up to Cloud Croft for a museum and lunch at a recommended coal fired pizza joint... we ended up at the Dusty Boots Cafe for lunch, and no museum. The museum that was suppose to be open was closed, the pizza place was closed on Tuesdays, which happened to be the day we were there. We didn't read far enough on their webpage to see they would be closed. The Dusty Boots was still a good choice for food, it was home style cooking. Now let's talk about getting to Cloud Croft. SR 82 is a steep windy two lane road that climbs to about 9,000 feet in about 2 miles... I'm kidding, but it was predominately an up hill grade for most of the 50+ miles. As you get closer to Cloud Croft there is a photo opportunity of an abandon train tressel. There are a lot of trails to hike in the area as well, some lead to the train tressel. I can't tell you too much history
about the tressel, the museum was closed, the locals did not appear too knowledgeable.

After that lunch we had in Cloud Croft, we turned around and went home.




What was I thinkin? Yes pistachios. Carol and I took a drive to a couple of local pistachio farms in the effort to spent large amounts of money on.... nuts. Both farms offered tours and wine tasting. We opted out of the tours of trees with no leaves, and did wine taste at the second farm. Carol did find a bottle of pistachio wine she like; yes we brought it home.


Our last day carol and I took a trip out to White Sands. Originally we had decided that it could wait until another visit, we are both glad we didn't wait. We sat down and watched the video at the Visitor Center, very informative. It's hard to comprehend that what one sees is a field of drywall material not mashed together for building one's home's walls. The white sand is actually gypsum. In some areas of the
park the sand is so fine it feels like baby powder. This picture is atop a hill looking down on our truck. A lot of people come here to slide down the dunes, some families spend their entire vacation here, just to slide down these magnificent dunes. To get an idea how
tall some of these dunes, this picture on the right was taken looking straight on from the truck window. The actual height of the dune was probably 12 feet, approximately 5 feet higher than the truck. Part of the park is paved roads, part is driving on white sand roads, in fact, the best part of the park is once you get on the white sand roads. Once on white sand there is an opportunity to park and walk a boardwalk through the dunes. The boardwalk has a small area displaying information about what can be found on the dunes, whether it be vegetation or wildlife. It would be easy to make it a day trip because they have made it possible to enjoy the dunes, break for lunch at one of the picnic areas, and back to sliding down a dune. We returned home before the rains came.

With the occasional rains we started prepping for the next leg of our journey, which is to Lakewood NM, where we will be dry camping at an Escapee park. For those who do not know what dry camping is... we will be a self contained unit. Self contained means that we carry our own water, supply our own electricity, and store all our waste waters (toilet, sinks, and showers).