Day 51: White Sands to Trinity
(Wednesday 19 May 2004)
EARLY MORNING below Cloudcroft New Mexico. We pull out of camp REAL early this morning and start sliding down the steep escarpment of the Sacramento mountains, shooting down like marbles in a Pachinko machine. We might almost think we were whizzing down one of the steeper portions of the Sierras' west face, say the Southern Sierras towards Porterville, except that as we get lower there are fewer trees, not more. We're dropping out of the pine forests back into the juniper-pinyon-mesquite range.
We have a goal for this early departure which is seeing slanting sunlight rays across the white sands of White Sands National Monument, all the gypsum waves held in relief by shadow and light.
We drop further out of the mountains into a steep caņon cutting thru rocky sediments. Then further down, more of the desert still within this sharp arroyo. Around some turns the Tularosa Valley is visible; great vistas open before us briefly, then we whip past. Down down down, back into creosote-bush terrain. And just as we leave the National Forest an immensity of white sand unrolls below us, and there's this great blanco slash across the horizon - the gypsum sand beds that haven't dissolved yet. Hey, ordinary wallboard is made of gypsum and IT dissolves when it gets wet!
We come into the outskirts of Alamogordo - many old decayed sandblasted mobile homes scattered along the creosote-saltbush plain. This suburb looks less than desireable. And there's Alamogordo itself which looks to be a good-sized city but it's an off-post town. It bears an uncanny but scaled-down resemblance to El Paso. Interesting, seeing billboards advertising military contractors in English and German. The highway is like a shoddy strip-mall.
WHITE SANDS: We get to White Sands early for the best light but we're TOO early, it doesn't open for a half hour. When they finally DO open we head for the dunes. We get on the Big Dune Trail, start walking thru this gypsum sand, very fine aeolian stuff. Ya don't sink into it like ya do beach sand, it's easier to walk on, better packed. And WHITE, so white!
This isn't a life-altering experience like going thru Carlsbad Caverns (even if ya don't fall into a pile of bat guano) but under a full moon it might be. So we'll be back!
And as we trudge along we are reminded that this is part of the White Sands Missile Range and Holloman - three fighter jets go DIRECTLY overhead - WHOOM!!!
Maureen: Whoom.
Me: WHAT?
Maureen: WHAT?
Me: WHAT?
Maureen: WHAT?
Happy anniversary. What? What? Yeah, this is our 25th. 25 days of happiness. And we come to this alien landscape to celebrate. Whoopee ti yi yay.
Heading towards The Heart Of The Dunes we pass another philosophical road sign: PAVEMENT ENDS. But, doesn't everything, eventually? The cycles of existence, beginnings and ends. Cycles of sand, the cycles of roads, the cycles of words. Some are probably wishing that words would end around now. Well, tough.
Beyond the pavement the road is a hard-packed gypsum, like pavement with washboarding. And we are now, not officially but figuratively in The Heart Of The Dunes and this is EERIE here at 8:00 in the morning, local time. The sun is still not too many degrees above the horizon. And all around us is white white white. I'M GOING SNOWBLIND!! AAARRRGGHH!! This looks like a soon-to-be-hot icescape.
The picnic areas have scattered tables with shelters, the shelters look like sails. Put them on pontoons and go blowing off across the playas.
And so we roll out of White Sands National Monument determined to return at a pleasant time and date, under a full moon, when we can roll on the sand naked, howling like coyotes, burrowing like beetles, screaming like outraged conservatives during a tax increase. But I digress.
ALAMAGORDO: We cruise thru historic downtown Alomogordo. It needs work. Yawn. Get decaf and Mexican cookies, continue onward. North of Alamogordo we go thru Tularosa, an engaging...
Maureen: THE PHONE!! I can't reach it!
(We talk on the cell with our realtor.)
...an engaging small city or large town with many fine old and new adobes et ectera and an old Franciscian mission, large shade trees, a fairly comfortable-feeling place. North of there we come to Three Rivers and considering that we don't know when we will next be in the area, we drive uphill back into the Sacramento Mountains toward the famous Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. Ahead of us the mountains loom brightly blue with dynamic clouds creeping over them.
The community of Three Rivers itself, which is actually marked on the maps, seems to consist entirely of a store selling crafts, nicknacks and cider. We purchased some of the latter.
Alas it is as I feared, too warm to walk the trail out to the petroglyphs now, we must return in a better season.
The store in Three Rivers is currently called the Indigo Lizard. Besides that structure there's also a sunburnt modular (old) and an old stone structure painted bright red, looks to have been either a church or a school. The AAA guidebook says that Three Rivers still maintains a ranching and farming economy. I look at what's there and I wonder, HOW?
CARIZOZO: We arrived in Carizozo New Mexico, the county seat of Lincoln County which includes the fabulously wealthy Ruidoso and Ruidoso Downs. Carizozo though seems like it's had MUCH better days. A very decrepit town and I guess they don't feel like feeding the lawyers much 'cause the only eatery near the county courthouse is a taco wagon.
We were hungry but not that hungry so we surveyed the possibilities and stopped at PizzaZozo and had a fine lunch of hero sandwiches, salad and homemade rhubarb cobbler. It's located in an adobe bungalow like the only other eatery in town that looks halfway clean, which is half a block away, a sandwich-espresso shop.
Carizozo, Three Rivers and Tularosa were once in the purview of the fabulous Three Rivers Ranch, originally acquired by a Mr; Coughlan of Ireland and Texas who became very wealthy while ignoring the finer points of the law. He was brought down somewhat by his dealings with Billy The Kid (whom he commissioned to steal cattle). He eventually sold off his ranch to Colonel Fall who as Secretary of the Interior under President Harding, took the fall for the Teapot Dome scandal. And what's left of the ranch is now owned by a former Under-Secretary of Defence in the Bush administration. This bit of real estate just seems too attract seedy politicos.
It's a very quiet area. In fact some say the locals didn't even notice when the first nuclear bomb was set off right over the hills, not far away. Others say they DID notice but didn't talk about it. Go figure.
GHOST TOWN? And now we arrive in White Oaks New Mexico, alleged ghost town - well, it used to be pretty prosperous, there aint much, a few scattered buildings left now. And home of the No Sucm Allowed Saloon. Not really a ghost town - Ye Olde Massage Parlour, watch your steps. OK. Um, two or three dozen buildings, many old, some new. Hmmm, we thought there was National Forest just above the town but the road was not promising.
So back downhill thru Carizozo and over to El Malpais, the Valley of Fires, a BLM recreation area which is situated in a lava flow a couple thousand years old, the lave is four to six miles wide and 44 miles long, fairly deep, great mass of aa-aa and pahoehoe flows. Growing up out of it are tree-cholla (that's opuntia imbricata) and some platy-opuntias and yuccas, Spanish daggers... Wherever anything could get a roothold in a crack in the lava, it sprouted.
I'm sure the Valley of Fires would be a great place to hang around however the outside air is about 92°f and even though it's whipping by at a good rate it's still a bit warm for laying around and resting this afternoon (we are now at midafternoon, it's almost 4:00). So after celebrating our 25th anniversary with that nice little feed back there at PizzaZozo, we are heading westward, going across some low hills and then across the Jornado del Muerto, the Journey of Death. I will not draw any connexions between these events.
The map says the hills we are crossing are the juncture of the Oscura Mountains and the Chupadera Mesa, just skirting the northern edge of the White Sands Missile Range. Carizozo itself looks to be about 30 miles due east of the Trinity Site - which is open for tours precisely two days per year, for those tourists who HAVE to see where the first nuke was detonated. We hear there are many Japanese visitors. Hmmm.
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Day 52: Trinity Site to VLA
(Thursday 20 May 2004)
MORNING, Bingham New Mexico, We pulled in yesterday afternoon on a dirt road leading away from White Sands Missile Range, up on the Chupadera Mesa, for a nice quiet cooling afternoon and evening and night. Back on the road we pass thru Bingham which has a dirt road going off to Gran Quivara - Bingham itself appears to be a rock shop another crap stand, both with nuclear souvenirs. You can buy samples of Trinitite here, the mineral formed at the first atomic blast.
The AAA map marks Bingham as the beginning of the the Jornado del Muerto, the Journey of Death, which is a long stretch of desert paralleling the Rio Grande where there's no water.
And I'm just wondering: if ya have to travel this stretch, why not stay near the river?
Approaching Stallion Gate we observe mother and fawn antelopes off the side of the road.
Dropping down out of the hills on the west side of Jornado del Muerto we see colorful formations in the sandy hills, Maureen calls it a miniature Painted Desert. All along the way here this is apparently springtime, noce floral displays.
Between San Pedro and San Antonio we cross the Rio Grande and it is pretty grande here, and muddy. What's muddy in Spanish? Oscura? At San Antonio we turn north on old Highway One - before the interstate, this was *IT*. Now it's just a lonely backroad. Riding north along the west edge of the Rio Grande's floodplain, all of which is green, agricultural, and everything beyond isn't.
SOCORRO: We arrive in Socorro midmorning, look around at the historical district - there ARE historical old buldings. There's also a fragment of Trinitite in the city park.
We had plans but once again we were fooled. We were unable to quickly make contact locally. So we handled some communications issues rather than browse Socorro and head up into the high country, Magdalena, very large array, et cetera. Instead we diddled with phones, had lunch at Don Juan's in a historic block just off downtown, and are now driving north on the interstate towards Albuquerque, hoping for an active cell area. With any luck we'll finish these transactions, turn around, head back south to Socorro and up into the mountains.
Late afternoon, Magdalena. Our plans are back on track, we achieved communications in Belen, and completed our necessities, and are now up here in higher country, sitting in Magdalena outside a market. Magdalena is half yuppie gentrification and half a Navaho town. There's a totally fried guy sitting sitting on a bench in front of the market, gesticulating at people and at nobody. The town is old adobe houses -- j'z, does that sound familiar? -- and modulars and galleries scattered all over the place. And half the faces are Navaho.
Then we continue on past Magdalena out to the Plains of San Augostin and the Very Large Array. And yes, it is Very Large. It's not arrayed out very far today, they're doing some low-resolution wide-angle work. We took the whole walking tour and stood under the big dishes and I took lots of pictures of dishes, none of them filled with strawberry shortcake. I mean they're at such at angle that it would just slide out.
And now we head west, with all the dishes arrayed on our left, and ahead of us is a sky of creamy clouds with red and orange and mother-of-pearl. Coming out of the VLA an antelope ran across the road just in front of us and then alongside the road a bit, couldn't miss that white butt. Driving into the sunset, yes -- Maureen calls it a Muench sky but no one's screaming around here. Yet. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!
While we were looking at the radio telescope dishes -- the walking tour allows you to get up close, right underneath one dish -- and as we were there it slewed around rapidly, into another direction. And now I look -- they HAD all been facing east, and now they are all pointed north, pointed at about oh 35-40 degrees above horizontal. And a little bit west of due north.
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Day 53: VLA & ShootOut & More
(Friday 21 May 2004)
Friday morning, Datil (rhymes with cattle) New Mexico. We are camped at the Datil Well campsite, BLM site. At 7000 feet in beautiful piņon-juniper woodlands. Nice blue skies. Datil Well was the water source for a cattle trail, a trail that was used from the 1880s to the 1960s. We are hiking a nature trail to a rocky overlook, and we can TELL that we're walking at 7000 feet. Walking down that trail we espied our first horned lizard of this trip, of many trips -- I don't remember seeing horny toads out in the wild in our previous SouthWest adventures, maybe once long ago in Joshua Tree.
Now it's midday, we're heading back east again. We just can't stay away from the VLA although this time we're just going for the gift shop.
And now at 1:15 PM local time, all the VLA dishes are still in a fairly compact (which means wide-angle) configuration, pointing almost straight up. Off to the northwest by maybe five or ten degrees. If ya love Big Science ya just gotta love the VLA, it's about the Biggest Science there is.
Now these VLA dishes, they're big but they're not the biggest. They're what, 80 feet across, each weigh a couple hundred tons, but we've seen bigger. Out at JPL's Deep Space Network listening station at Goldstone, we've been around the ones that I think were 200 feet or more diameter. But that was just a couple of them and a slew of smaller dishes. Here the array makes a difference. Think of it as electro-mechanical technological teamwork.
MidDay, Magdalena: So, back to Magdalena for lunch and a little business, transactions, too good a deal to bypass. We see postings for an event in town, the Shoot-Out. We ask around; nobody knows where it's going to be. Yes, the Unknown Community Event.
Finally a librarian points us towards an antique shop slash used book shop slash visitors center where we're given directions and smell smoke and also told that the world's largest optical telescope is being built nearby, up Water Canyon. It'll be overlooking the Very Large Array. I've never heard of this 'scope, I'll have to look it up.
And being in Magdalena we have to come to the town's historic site, which is: livestock pens. Old wood ones. This is the end of the trail for the Livestock Driveway. "The pens were built in 1885 when the Santa Fe railroad finished its branch line from Socorro to Magdalena. Stockmen from as far away as Springerville Arizona and Reserve New Mexico drove their cattle and sheep to Magdalena for shipping to the markets back east." And the Driveway was disbanded in the mid-1970s, a victim of highways and trucks.
The town of Magdalena nestles beneath the Magdalena Mountains. Supposedly the face of Mary Magdalene is embossed on the face of Magdalena Mountain, but I guess she's elsewhere today. Maybe doing drugs or doing politics or reading a book.
SASS SHOOTOUT: Now this Magdalena Shootout is supposedly a national championship with period firearms - I wonder if anyone's actually gonna get shot? Will blood flow down the streets? Maureen says, "Oh, The Humanity!" Will the screams of the wounded echo through the air? If there aren't any signs up, will anybody come?
Ah, the dirt road out to the airport has a sign: SASS SHOOT. Is this where all the bloodlettin's gonna be? We probe our way in to see... And with a red flag marking the way, another sign: COWBOY SHOOTERS.... Dust is whipping through the air. Cacti are swaying back and forth. The sun burns down relentlessly on anthills. But over the rattling of our running gear and the noise of our air conditioning we can't hear any gunshots ring out. And nobody else is driving this long lonely road.
At last we surmount a crest and there's the encampment! With a US flag and everything. So we stop nearby and I think we'll mosey on over and take a gander...
As soon as I get out of the vehicle I hear gunshots!
Well we go wanderin' through and they're shootin' but not AT anybody, just the targets, no blood flowin'. Boring... BUT we had some nice chats with officers of the Single Action Shooters Association.
MAUREEN: We talked to one fellow who had a shop in town, turns out he's head of the Chamber of Commerce. His name is Lee Storrs. And he was telling us that the traffic light out in Datil (rhymes with cattle) where we camped last night is the only light between here and the Arizona state line. And the bulb was burned out for about a year. And they changed it. And all of a sudden everybody's talking about, "Hey! Did ya notice that light's working again?"
And he also thinks that Arizona's overpopulated and too busy Everything there is going 24-7, but New Mexico's better because everybody knows everybody and it's been the same families here for generations and y'know, not too big a deal.
He also told us about a couple of guys and a girl out in a pickup truck and the guys got into a fight and one of'em killed the other one with a shotgun inside the pickup truck. And somehow the Sheriff got into it but they couldn't find the guy who was supposed to be the killer. They found him the next day walking along the road, all beat to hell and naked, naked and beat to hell and bloody and everything. They took him down to the hospital and got him patched up and took him to jail and he escaped from jail. And the next day they were looking for him and they found him again in the same condition, walking down another road naked and beat to hell and... And come to find out, the guy that he shot had six brothers. And the mom said, "Well, do whatever you want to him but don't kill him."
Then there's the fella from elsewhere who seemed to be out of money and out of luck. And he decided that the bar in Magdalena would be a good place to recoup his finances. So he goes in the bar and produces a firearm and points it at the barmaid, and four shots ring out. An hour and a half later when the sheriff's deputy shows up there's a dead guy on the floor and four guys at the bar drinkin' free beer. Oh yeah, the guy had four bullet holes in him. The sheriff interviewed each of the guys there at the bar and nobody knew what happened. Each one had a gun in his holster and it's illegal, it's a felony to have a gun in a bar in New Mexico but the sheriff just tipped his hat and went on his way. And that's how they do things in rural New Mexico, eh?
Lee said that this shootout, which is a competition of various types of old weapons, is the largest social gathering in the county other than the high school graduation. And we also talked to the head of the local SASS chapter, he's Slippery Steve. He said that the organization SASS has been around for 22 years but the local chapter just organized a year and a half ago, two years ago. And at the beginning of this year they announced they were going to have a shootout here, and starting in March they cleared a large area that was nothing but brush and cholla, and now there's a little western village and shooting range. It's an area maybe a bit bigger than a football field, with bleachers. So SOMEBODY did a lot of work, and one of the old coots sitting there turns out to be the guy that did most of the work. So they started work in late February, early March, and now it's early May, mid-May...
Late afternoon: We roll past the VLA again. Now the dishes are oriented the way they were yesterday afternoon at about this time. That makes sense. Study the same objects at the same time every day because that's what's up in the sky. And just a little further, ten antelope grazing near the highway and a big dust devil blowing across the road JUST IN FRONT OF US - it looks like it'll beat us to the intersection so... we won't get blown away this time. Or scoured mercilessly.
Lee, back at the shootout, recommended that we eat in Datil at the Eagle Lodge or somethin-or-other, Eagle Ranch, connected to the 66 gas station. He said they have a steak sandwich that, the bread's just a joke, it's mostly just steak, and another fine western eating experience. So we pulled in there and the station was out of regular, and we go inside to eat and I'm sure the food's good but the place seems to one them smoking-mandatory establishments. So we finished our beers, thanked the staff and evacuated post-haste.
Across the road there's a little caravan, burro-drawn, people stopped there, currying the burro - don't know what their story, just like we don't know the stories of the bikers with the backpacks or some of the other folks hanging around there, everybody smoking. Why, we feel so out of place... (Maureen laughs.) Guess we'll have to go back to Arizona or some other Mecca of civilization.
VEHICLE PLANS: Meanwhile we have been speaking about how we shall replace this RV and what vehicle(s) would be appropriate for three types of driving. We have three goals:
* Goal three: a downsized but comfortable and newer RV that can take us when we go north to Canada, the Maritimes, Alaska. Size is not super-significant here.
* Goal two: something that would be parkable in Bisbee on the street, which means NOT a big RV, and that would be suitable for exploring around the SouthWest.
* Goal one: something to drive across Mexico to Guatemala. Yes we have been speaking more about driving across Mexico, going to Guatemala, seeing it all close-up.
Whatever vehicle we replace the RV with will have to have full leg room for the passenger. Right now it's very confined over there on the right. Maureen's in a foetal position all day, curled up and whimpering like a little puppy. (Maureen whimpers.) For fuel economy, a smaller RV or camper-van (which is what we've been thinking of) should be diesel fueled.
For goal one, we're kinda thinking of just driving our existing 1996 Ford Explorer down thru Mexico and Guatemala and Costa Rica and wherever. It gets pretty good mileage, it's pretty low-profile, and we won't spend any more money. And we wouldn't be tempted to haul along any extraneous stuff. It'll mean going from posada to posada rather than campsite to campsite; but that should be afordable, especially getting twice the gas mileage that the RV does.
But goal two, cruising around the SouthWest while we're based in Bisbee, is still problematic. The best I can come up with is that we camp out of the Explorer, get a motel room every third night or so. And camping out of the Explorer means not having to spend money on another vehicle or appurtenances either. My least desireable option there is getting some little travel trailer or a pop-up trailer, but I *HATE* trailers.
For goal three, heading north, we are fairly convinced that a good-sized camper van might be the answer, although we have to try some out and see, and check how the money goes, see how straight across we can swap this big thing for something smaller and a bit newer.
So, quien sabe, we shall see.
ROLLING: And meanwhile we're continuing to cruise along the edge of the VAST Plains of San Augustine, they just go on for miles and miles. The the elevation's about 7400 feet. We've checked our altimeter, it agrees with the map. And I suddenly realized why everybody back there in Datil was smoking. That's the only way they can get the air thick enough for their lungs. (Maureen laughs.) Otherwise their lungs would puff out, they'd get all barrel-chested and look even funnier than they do.
At this elevation in the high high plains, the mesquite and the creosote bush have all fallen way behind. We can see, maybe that's burrobush and sage and clumpgrasses.
And then we climb away from the Plains of San Augustine a bit higher, a bit of juniper and piņon - but now all of a sudden we're in taller pine country, I don't recognize these, and some really rocky buttes and peaks. What a difference a couple hundred feet makes.
We cross the Continental Divide and just over the lip on the Arizona side is our first roadside memorial in awhile. A real colorful one too.
So the piņon-juniper forest is thickening, the hills are more rounded and closer together. We pass through the green little mountain village of Aragon in a valley that's widening, with a warning sign up for ELK, same as we saw back in Datil. No wussy little leaping deer signs here that ya paint a red dot on the nose of, NO. These are big virile manly honkers.
We're in the valley of the Tularosa River. To the east are the Tularosa Mountains. And this river actually has some water in it, unlike many of those we've crossed recently.
GO: back In SouthEast NewMexico
GO: on to Up Western New Mexico
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The DISCOVERY and HISTORY of CARLSBAD CAVERNS (1932-1998)
A TRIP THROUGH SPACE and TIME: Las Cruces to Cloudcroft (1996)
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