Thursday, 3 April

We had another decent breakfast at the hotel and headed up into the foothills near the Museum of Space History.  We found the trailhead of the “Indian Wells” hiking trail and took it 1,5 miles up the mountain.  We only got lost once.  That 3 miles felt more like 10…..

From the Indian Wells Trail overlooking the Space Museum

We did tour the Space History Museum.  I got to try to land the Space Shuttle in a fairly realistic simulator.  It was not a successful landing but they did say that I went “Where no man had ever gone before”.

Space Shuttle Simulator

After lunch back in Alamogordo, we went to the largest “Pistachio Ranch” in New Mexico.  Evidently the soil and climate here is the same as it is in Iran, where most pistachios are grown.

Ellen getting a lesson in Pistachio husbandry....

Keith in the Pistachio 'sorting room' with his hair net(s).

We stopped again at the “White Sands National Monument” so we could get into the visitor center, which was closed last night, and also to see the dunes in the daylight.

We plan to keep heading west and spend the night in Deming.  We want to be in Tucson, AZ by tomorrow afternoon to visit Ellen’s sister, Arlene & family, who usually escape from Winona, Minnesota for the winter.

“Vacation” is amost over as we’ll be back in Tempe Arizona by Saturday noon to return the rental car.  We’ll stay with Ellen’s brothers, Jim & Greg until we fly back to Wisconsin late next Tuesday.

Wednesday, 2 April - PM

We drove to Alamogordo and have about 1,300 miles on the rental car so far.  We checked into the hotel and then headed out to the White Sands National Monument to watch the sunset.

There was supposed to be a “Sunset Walk” in the dunes but the Ranger said it was too windy to travel very far off the roadway.

We hung around to watch the sunset anyway……

Wednesday AM, 2 April

We actually set an alarm for this morning to make sure we got up and on the move to Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  It was about 40 minutes from our motel and opened at 8AM and we were there!  We have our “Senior Passes” for National Parks so us old folks get in for free.  We double checked on the Ranger guided tours and there were two spots available so we took them.

They don’t open the cavern until 8:30 and we entered by the “Bat Cave”.  They actualy have an amphitheater at the entrance where people can watch bats leave the cave at dusk.The bats ‘winter’ in Mexico, so we didn’t get to see them.  It took us a little over an hour to walk over mile and descend 850 feet below the surface.

 

There was a gift shop and food service area where we waited for our guided tour of the “Kings Palace”.  That took another hour and half.

We finished with another hour and half waking tour of the ‘Big Room’ which is single cavern covering 8.2 acres.  When we finished, we got to take and elevator to the surface where we were blinded by sunlight and glad to be out of the 56 degree, 90% humidity of the caverns.

We drove back to town and decided to head toward Alamogordo.

Tuesday, 1 April

We finally slept in a little bit.  It was probably due to the strenuous hikes the day before and the hot tub treatments before bed.  We had a decent breakfast at the hotel and drove to Sumer.  

We didn’t see much at the Fort but we did spend several hours at Sumner Lake, where they have a very impressive dam that’s part of the Pecos River Water Project.  We found out that the scenery in this part of the state is very flat and boring……

We drove thru Sumner and on to Roswell hoping that we would see the sign for the turn-off to “Area 51”.  We stopped at a drug store to get some eye drops for Ellen’s dry eyes and met this elderly gentleman who happened to be the caretaker of the only remaining alien that is still being held alive on life support.  Ellen went outside and yelled “Take Me!” for a full 10 minutes but nobody came so we drove on to Carlsbad.

We’re all set up to enter the Carlsbad Caverns National Park early next morning.  We had trouble getting reservations at both the hotel and also for “Ranger Tours” at the Caverns, so we may be experiencing some interference from the ‘Spring Break” that normal people do………