Mar 2007

We pack up and drive outside of Alamogorda NM to White Sands National Monument. We stop at the Visitors Center and look at the exhibits and the movie about the gypsum deposits that make up the white sands. Then off we go to see the white sands.

I'm getting tired of the desert, but this place is different and well worth a stop. We pull off and read all the roadside exhibits, and take a small walk down to a playa to look at the crystals of gypsum.

Joe is excited about this place, but not for it's educational reasons. He wants to sled down the sand dunes of gypsum. So we drive to the end of the road and park in one of the huge parking lots with lots of other 'sledders'. There's a school group at the park today plus lots of spring break groups (families and teenagers). Many of the groups are prepared to spend the day (with umbrellas, picnic coolers, portable patio coverings, etc).

We find our hill and take off down the hill with the two sleds we bought at the visitors center. We spend several hours there, with a break for lunch in the RV. Lots of fun.

I cannot resist posting a picture of Jere with his infamous UMBRELLA HAT :-) The first time we went out sledding he forgot his cowboy hat, so he said this would be the perfect place for his umbrella hat. Joe and I protested, citing embarassment, but to no avail:

We drive to a KOA near the border of NM/AZ and stop for the night. We're in the boonies, so this KOA is not as nice as the others we've stayed at, but they do have beautifully Mexican tiled showers :-)

We pack up and leave Guadalupe NP. It's a day of driving, ending up driving to Alamogordo, NM (near White Sands National Monument).

The drive included crossing the Sacramento Mountain Range and there was snow at the top of the pass, so we pulled over and let Joe play in the snow for awhile:

We stopped at the New Mexico Space Museum near White Sands but didn't go in since it looked REALLY BORING, especially after spending a day at the wonderful Houston Space Museum. But we did go to the IMAX theatre next door to see a movie about the history of cowboys. Good movie....interesting. The IMAX theatre only held 100 people at most, so the seats all leaned back to watch the movie -- very comfortable -- I could have taken a nap if the movie would have been boring :-)

The RV park we pick out is fine, but the campsite they give us is a really hard site to back in. Lots of obstacles to try to avoid. It wasn't so bad that it took so long to get into the spot, but we had several people watching (helping?) us. After a few minutes, I just stood back and let Jere and the guy who insisted on helping him get into the spot. The guy kept telling me what Jere needed to do and I just smiled and told him "I just make sure he doesn't hit anything". His wife smiled and said it's always best for the wife to say as little as possible when parking an RV :-)

Beautiful sunny morning. We turn on our generator, perc our coffee, and watch the tenters trudge up the hill to wash their dishes -- we tented for many years and always complained that the tenters were put far away from the rest rooms while the RVers were close to the restrooms -- so I don't feel guilty at all -- we put in our time in the tent section :-)

After breakfast we drive down the road to stop at Pinery Station which was an old stagecoach stop for the Butterfield Stagecoach. We also stop at the Frijole Ranch & Museum to learn about ranchlife in the early 1900s.

Then drive to the McCintrock Canyon trailhead and do the 4.8 mile roundtrip hike. It was fairly flat but also fairly boring -- no wildlife, no desert flowers, very little shade, very little water. There were two old cabins to look at towards the end of the trail and we took a nice break at one point where there was a little water and shade. Our least favorite hike so far this trip; I guess we should have 'bit the bullet' and did the Guadalupe Peak hike.

We go out at night to look at the stars and continue working on our constellation identification. We still can't identify many, but Joe has taught us how to use our night sky map :-)

We are planning to camp at Guadalupe National Park the next two nights and they only have about 20 RV sights, so we get an early start and drive an hour to the park. We get to the park around 9am and pass a large motorhome leaving the park, so we know there's at least one sight vacant. (This park does not take reservations). We set up camp and find out the people beside us (less than ten feet away from us; the RV sights are simply two small paved parking lots) are from Dauphin PA, right up the road from our house. So after talking to them for awhile, we walk down to the Visitor's Center to look at the exhibits and get info on the park.

My back is still not 100% yet, and many of the hikes here are "Strenuous" so we decide to drive to Carlsbad Cavern NP for the day to tour the caverns and then we'll take a long hike tomorrow. By the time we leave for the caverns the campground has all tent sites filled and 2 RV sights left and we pass a tent camper coming into the campground, so we're glad we came early.

The caverns are about 35 miles north of us so we take another drive through the Chihuahuan Desert to get there. The desert in northern Texas has not been near as picturesque as in Big Bend. To be honest I've really seen enough of it and am looking forward to seeing different scenery.

When Jere mentioned coming to Carlsbad, I said yes -- I wanted to see the thousands of bats fly out of the cave in the evening. Well, I learned that the bats at Carlsbad fly south in the winter! You need to visit in the summer to see this phenomenon. Oh well...I'm not a cave person, never been fond of closed in spaces, but the caverns here are huge! And they have lots of formations (steleothems). It took us just over 2 hours to take the self-guided walking tour around the caverns, so I enjoyed the caverns (despite the lack of bats).

Drove back through the Chihuahuan Desert to the campground and had dinner, turned on the generator til 8pm to watch a DVD on Davy Crockett, read a book and called it a day.

Interesting sidenote: This park has more tentsites (40?) than RV sights (20?) and is the first campground that we stayed at where we have one of the largest rigs (they have a 55' limit and our rig is about 53'), so we get a lot of people looking at our rig, including college students on spring break. I would love to eavesdrop to hear what they're saying when they look at it :-) It gets cold here at night, so I'm glad to be in the RV rather than a tent like the college students. When the cold front came through it yesterday with the bad storms, they had snow in the higher elevations of El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak.

We drive to the McDonald Observatory, part of the University of Texas at Austin program. Joe and I would always listen to their 5 minute radio program on the public radio station years ago when I drove him to kindergarten, "Stargazer". Each morning they would tell you what to look at the sky that night plus give some info on the stars or planets.

We look at the exhibits (kindof boring I thought) and then attend their Solar Show with a guy named Shannon, who was an excellent speaker and was our tour guide later for touring their 107" telescope facility. The show about the sun was very good, but a lot of info in 35 minutes. After the show we hop on the shuttle (since we have the RV we can't drive to the telescope facility at the top of the hill) and take a one-hour tour of their 107" telescope facility. Again, Shannon is a very good speaker and it actually was very interesting.

Then back in the truck for some more driving through west Texas desert. By this time, I'm getting tired of the desert, with no cell coverage so no internet on the road. I'm so thankful for our XM radio! We go back and forth between the news channels and the music.

We call Guadalupe National Park campground to see if they think they'll have a site for tonight and find out that they only have one sight left and we're still an hour away in Van Horn, TX. So we pull into a KOA, which was a great decision. They have mini-golf for us to play (Joe beat Jere and I by ten strokes, so he had a great time playing golf), free popcorn for Joe and FREE WIFI service for us. We haven't had internet connectivity for the last week, so both laptops were used the entire evening at the campsite :-)