New Mexico (07-01-17)

Alamogordo

There are several issues we are still dealing with in El Paso, so that’s where we spent the last weeks of June.  We took advantage of a break in the action though, and took a short vacation.

My only goal was to get out of the heat (temps have been over 100 every day in El Paso) and do some hiking. I was thwarted in that desire for the first day or so- it was over 100* in Alamogordo too. 

We did do some exploring though.  This is pistachio country so we went to a local farm and tested some pistachios and some wines.  I liked this Pistachio Rose, so I bought it and will wait and share it with friends at some point.

Nearby is White Sands National Monument.  I have never seen it, so we got up early in the morning to check it out before it got too hot.

The sand looks an awful lot like snow, and acts like it in some ways too.

This is the world’s largest gypsum dune field.  There are several hiking trails but we kept to the short ones due to the hot temperatures. 

You can also buy saucers for sledding down the hill, but they are $16 each, yikes!  I think if someone had never been sledding on snow, maybe it would be worth it, but trust me, they weren’t moving as fast as they would have been on real snow.

Cloudcroft

Cloudcroft, like it’s name suggest, sits high in the clouds, at about 8500 ft.  Tired of being hot, we planned a day trip up to this small resort town.

Our first stop was the outdoor museum, which contained quite a few restored historic buildings.  This one caught my eye. 

Back in the day, public outhouses were differentiated by the symbol carved in the door.  The “ladies room” had a  half moon, and the “men’s room” had a star or a sun.  However, apparently the guys weren’t as diligent in cleaning as the women, so over a period of time, the men all gravitated towards the Ladies Room, and the star symbol became a thing of the past.

Historically Cloudcroft’s industry is tourism and lumber.  Years ago, the Cloud Climbing Railroad made its way up here, and brought tourists who were excited to escape the heat of the lower 

elevations.

Our first hike was relatively short at just over 3.5 miles.  We hiked to the Mexican Canyon Trestle (seen in the picture above). 
Built in 1889, it carried passengers up the mountain to Cloudcroft. There is a hidden speaker near the trestle that periodically plays the sound of a train.  Kinda freaked us out because the trestle doesn’t have tracks on either side anymore.

  The hike, although short, was tiring because we aren’t used to the 9000 ft elevation.

To Be Continued…..

Back Home…. (05-20-15)

Paul and I actually thought that having the boat behind the camper would slow us down on the way home, but that wasn’t the case at all.



It traveled very nicely back there. In fact, it traveled so nicely, we couldn’t always tell if it was still there! There were many times that we couldn’t see it at all, so Paul bought a PVC pipe 102” long and painted the ends fluorescent  pink. It stuck out just enough on each side so we could usually see it.  In this shot, you can see the boat tires, but mostly that wasn’t the case.

Several times we were up and on the road really early and were able to call it quits early enough in the day that we could go for a walk.  This was Pershing State Park in Missouri.

Dozer liked it when we stopped early enough for him to do some exploring outside.

So, how did the passenger on this 4500 mile long trip keep from getting bored?  Well, I had several projects that I worked on.  One was my family genealogy.  I had made contact with an elderly priest last year- he and I are third cousins once removed on BOTH my mom and dad’s side of the family.  He gave me a book he had written, which is a 178 page listing of my ancestors. I told him I would input the contents of the book onto Ancestry.com.  I am on page 118.

The other project was to search the web for Jeeps for sale along our route home.  I checked all the major cities as we approached them to see if we could find any that we would be interested in, now that we have narrowed down what we want. Our theory was that if we found “the one”, I would drive it back to Havasu.  We have been looking for quite a while, with no luck. Well, wouldn’t you know, I did find one that just came on the market- It’s in Lake Havasu City.  We called the dealership and made arrangements to see it when we get back to town.







We took a slight detour on the way back in order to stop in and say hi to Paul’s mom. We only stayed one day, and of course I took no pictures.  I did take some of the repairs we had to do to the shrink wrap on the boat, which started falling apart by the time we reached El Paso.










We left late the following afternoon, and drove until just past sunset, enjoying the way the sun lit up the desert.














A few days before we got home we got to thinking that neither of us had thought to shut off Dozer’s automatic feeder.  Well, we were right.  This is the mess that greeted us in the trailer.  Its not too bad, except the spout actually broke off from the force of the food.  It has already been fixed.  And no, we didn’t let Dozer in, until it had been cleaned up.











Hmmm….this is getting too long, so I’ll continue in the next post……..