Staying around Alamogordo has proven to be interesting in several ways. We took some day/overnight trips up into town and into the Capitan Mountains to ‘sniff’ around in quaint little mountain communities, visit historical and touristo places and just generally stick our collective noses into things. (Can you tell who might have been the pack leader here?) Here’s some of the fun we all had:
New Mexico Museum of Space History, Alamogordo- The Gals got to play with great interactive exhibits from the Nations’ space program plus the Russian space program with mockups of flight simulators, rockets and boosters, plus a really good Imax movie of Mars.
I got to stay out in my Pod and worry about the impeding storm and tornado warning; yup, a real, honest to goodness, get your head down tornado warning. I hate thunder and lightning in the best of times, but we had never been in a storm with an actual warning! The crazy Ladies decided to film the d--- thing so they are outside taking videos of the giant clouds and lightning strikes like some kind of fools. Not me Baby, I’m not that laid back I can tell you! I’m in bed with the covers pulled up hoping the whole thing just blows over! Of course it did and we were fine; in fact never even saw the actual tornado because it was too far south of us, but hey, that was still scary. Guess it was practice for the upcoming travels through the Midwest Tornado Alley. Hmmmmmm.
Three Rivers Petroglyphs Site- Not far from Tularosa, NM is another one of those mysterious and wonderful places where mankind has left his graffiti marks on the world; some 20,000 petroglyphs have been found here so far. Many of these follow much the same patterns and images as other places we have been but here were some truly unique ones too. There were more animal figures plus human faces than we had seen before and many more abstract and geometric designs. Very interesting!
The town of Capitan- We left Three Rivers and turned right into the Capitan Mountains to visit the little burg of Capitan, home of the Smokey Bear Museum and Park where the real Smokey is actually buried. I felt the need to visit this memorial since I had become an honorary member of Smokey’s Fire Patrol way back in the spring of 2006 in the forest near Crescent City, CA. This is a beautiful park, very interesting museum and a sweet little town with many interesting shops and stops. The town annually celebrates Smokey Bear Days in early May which made us guess this was their biggest claim to fame up there.
Spenser Theater of the Performing Arts- We dropped southward along a beautiful drive to Alto and a very unique theatrical venue called the Spenser Theater for the Performing Arts. An impressive, modernistic building perched on a ridge overlooking far vistas of mountains and high desert; it is touted as “… one of the seven architectural wonders of New Mexico”. The theater houses four major Dale Chihuly glass installations, the largest private collection in the southwest and a 514 seat theater. It was closed but we all had fun sniffing around. (I don’t know about theater stuff but the prairie dog holes were great!
Ruidoso Downs- South and east we traveled to the number one quarter-horse racetrack in the country at Ruidoso Downs, home of the $2-million dollar All-American Futurity, world’s richest quarter-horse race. Unfortunately it wasn’t open for the season yet, but we found some strange, really silent horses next door at the Hubbard Museum of the American West. Really weird if you ask me because these guys don't smell! I had actually met horses kinda like this once before at an RV Park in Parhump, NV. Strange world, sometimes.
Carrizozo- This is another funky little town that you can’t decide if it’s dying or reviving. There is lots of evidence that artists have an influence in the renovation of buildings and the number of galleries, but I think a town has major problems when you can’t even find a grocery store. Does anybody really live there, I wonder? Cokie and Kae stopped at one of the local galleries to see some photographs by a National Geographic photographer, Richard T. Bryant, a local boy made good. There was lots of stuff in town for the Ladies to photograph and for me to poke around in. This place was even weirder to me than Ruidoso because they seem to have a sizable population of very pretty, but silent, non-smelly burros! We had a fun couple of hours.
Just three miles west of Carrizozo are 44 square miles of domes, tubes and caves of thick pahoehoe lava, some of the best examples of this type of lava outside of Hawaii. Before Mt. St. Helens blew up this was the most recent lava flow in the continental US at about 1,000 years old. We camped overnight with full intentions of walking out onto the lava beds the next day only to be hit with tremendously rough, high winds. Something strange happened and all of the electricity in the Pod went out. Needless to say this is definitely not a good thing if the Ladies and I are to have our lattes in the morning. So we just headed back to Oliver Lee State Park to pick up our mail and to see where we might find a Roadtrek Dealer for repair work. Albuquerque was the nearest RV service spot so off we went, giving up the notion of Roswell and Carlsbad Caverns until this fall when we return to the southwest for the winter again. I’ll update the next set of adventures in a few weeks as we continue to try to head north and east into the navel of the nation. This is our second Blog posting and we are very interested in any comments, suggestions or ideas any of you may have. So keep those cards and letters coming, folks and thanks gobs! Until next time - wiggles and wags.
