Update Archive

Archive 12/23 - 1/2/2004:
12/23/2004 - ( 4.5 hours – 280 miles - H:31F - L:2F) I tried to go over to the Bandolier National Monument today. It’s northwest of Santa Fe. It was sunny at camp, but right past Santa Fe the snow started falling. Go ahead, call me chicken. I turned around and came home. I tried to ride the gondola to Sandia Peak, but it wasn’t running because it was too windy.
12/24/2004 - (H:32F - L:1F) 1???? That’s not a temperature. That’s the loneliest number… not a temperature. What the hell? This pretty much sucks. It’s too cold to walk around outside, day or night. Everything, and I mean everything, freezes overnight. It took two hours before I could run water through my pipes this morning. It’s nice and toasty in the coach…. But some of the pipes are on the outside wall and they are freezing solid at night. It was 12F at 8PM last night. It’s really windy too, so walking around outside is not fun at all.
12/25/2004 - (H:45F - L:7F) Wow. Heat wave. I am soooo out of here tomorrow. I’m going to head south and hit some of the spots I was going to take the coach to. I think I’ll just stay in hotels and zip through, see some things and do some reconnoitering.
12/26/2004 - ( 4 hours – 278 miles - H:F - L:10F) I’m outta here! I left kinda late, mostly because I had to wait for the pipes to unfreeze enough to run water. I drove east on I-40 and then took side roads to Vaughn and from there to Roswell. There was some snow on the way, but nothing to worry about as far as driving conditions. There was a lot more snow on the side of the road than I was expecting. At any rate, it’s warmer than back at camp!
12/27/2004 - ( 6.5 hours – 221 miles) I went out to see Ft. Sumner, where Billy the Kid is buried. Talk about wide-open country. It was easy to imagine the area like it would have been back in the day. Huge ranches, miles apart, all you can see are the signs at the end of their driveways…. Then I did the Roswell thing. There is a huge museum that timelines ‘the incident’ and shows various items as proof. It was all very credible, not kooky at all.
12/28/2004 - ( 5.5 hours – 206 miles) I drove to Carlsbad today. Nice easy drive with less and less snow the farther south we go. I did some reconnaissance at the caverns and then headed out to Sitting Bull Falls. There is supposed to be a 150ft waterfall out in the desert. Sadly, the road was closed about a mile from the falls, so we didn’t get to see them. Pretty country. Lots of natural gas and oil wells scattered everywhere.
The Days Inn in Carlsbad rocks! The showers are huge! It was so nice to have unlimited hot water… and no frozen pipes.
12/29/2004 - Carlsbad Caverns today. Wow…. This is so cool! I wish the bats were flying but they’ve already migrated south. They have kennel service at the visitor center, so I was able to leave Max in a better place than the truck. The Caverns are a must see. Since the lighting inside is really low not many of the pictures turned out very well… you’ll just have to go see for yourself :o)
12/30/2004 - ( 8 hours – 203 miles) Today we headed over to Alamogordo via Cloudcroft. Cloudcroft is a beautiful little town nestled in the Sacramento Mountains. Lots of skiing and sledding going on. Not far from Cloudcroft is Sunspot, which is where the National Solar Observatory is located. There are several solar telescopes on the nearby peaks – the elevation here is 9,200 ft. There was a fantastic visitor center full of all kinds of scientific info regarding the study of the sun (how’s that for oversimplified?). A self-guided trail lets you walk around the telescopes. Well worth the drive.
On my way out of Sunspot I took a wrong turn and ended up somewhat lost. Not a big deal except that I was really low on gas and there aren’t a lot of gas stations up there. After a mild panic attack, I turned around and found Cloudcroft again. Whew…. Fill ‘er up!
Once we reached Alamogordo we went straight to the Space Center. There we toured the four story International Space Hall of Fame, Stapp Air and Space Park, Hubbard Science Education Bldg., and watched a movie (Forces of Nature) at the IMAX Theater. I landed the space shuttle in the Space Shuttle simulator in the Space History Museum. Very, very cool place.
12/31/2004 - ( 5.5 hours – 47 miles) We went to the White Sands National Monument today. What an amazing place! The only one of its kind in the world. Max and I took the 1-mile Big Dune Trail and then the 4-mile Alkali Flat Trail. Oh my god, walking four miles up and down sand dunes…. What was I thinking? It’s a good thing it was only 60F (T-shirt weather!!! WooHoo!!!) or we would have both keeled over.
01/01/2005 - ( 8 hours – 392 miles) Homeward bound. Ah, if only you could have heard me singing that just now. Anyway, we stopped at the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site on the way back to camp. I took a ton of pictures. I’m pretty sure I have OCPTD (Obsessive Compulsive Picture Taking Disorder) because I can’t seem to stop taking pictures. Good thing it’s a digital or I’d go broke paying for film!
We took a side road up to Lincoln, NM. This little town way up in the hills is where Billy the Kid escaped for the last time… it’s also where much of the Lincoln County War conflict started and took place. The museum was closed, very disappointing, but the town itself has a bunch of placards telling you where things happened. We blew through pretty fast cause I was hoping to hit one other place before sundown. We didn’t make it… now I wish I had spent some extra time walking around in Lincoln.
01/02/2005 - (H:42F - L:29F) I had left the heaters running in the coach while I was gone. When I arrived last night it was 103F inside!! It felt great! However, I clearly need to work on my thermostat settings.
It rained on and off all day… with a little snow thrown in for good measure. It’s warmer than when I left. Still too cold for comfort. It’s ok… I decided to take the day off anyway :o)


New Pictures: NM