MY 50-STATE STRATEGY

I drove this route to take this picture. Just had to..

NEW MEXICAN JUMPING BEAN!

Southern New Mexico seems quite agreeable, easy going and, with a southwestern flare, charming.
Wonderful weather is the norm out here in the high desert. All seasons, I’m told, the temperature is consistently between 70-95 degrees during the day (a dry comfortable heat; zero humidity in my short six-day stay) and it may cool down to the 50s after dark. According to locals, it hardly ever rains, and it never snows. There is so little precipitation out here that if folks see rain clouds on the horizon, they say it “looks promising.” The air is clean, crystal clear, and there are no bugs!

The everyday, every roadway, scenes in New Mexico were outstanding.

It is routine to roll pass magnificent mountains 10,000 feet tall and above (The many medium-sized small peaks are all around 7-8,000 feet, although it is relevant to note that the elevation up here runs near or over a mile above sea level). The scenery is so consistently awesome that I stopped taking pictures of it (if I
didn’t, that’s all I’d be doing and, you may not believe it but, I’ve got a schedule to keep). The mountains, the canyons, the desert and the clear blue skies melt together to make travel hereabouts a visual delight.
It seems cheap, even to tourists such as myself. Everything appears priced below market except, of course, a gallon of gas or, say, vodka on the rocks in a restaurant, both of which bear big-city price tags. According to one overly chatty resident in Carlsbad, a small town that passes for a big city here, you can rent a nice three-bedroom house on the “bad” side of town for $300 a month or an opulent one-bedroom apartment over on the “good” side for around $250. Of course, a paycheck here is not up to big-city standards, so there are trade-offs in the affordability department.
In these old cow towns and railroad crossings, rejuvenated of late by sightseer’s dollars, I‘ve discovered people to be direct in speech, yet friendly and talkative. The southern part of the state seems like a come-as-you-are locale, and since come-as-you-are is the best I can presently (and usually) muster, it is quite relaxed and comfy.
That said, southern New Mexico, at least for tourists, seems a curious mishmash of the Old West and the New Frontier of space exploration. I visited a half-dozen intended sites, along with a couple of quick stopovers, in the southern part of the state, some well known, others just for a hoot. I will attempt to encapsulate my observations and/or opinions on those spots already experienced below.
Here goes:

In the Hall of Giants at Calsbad Carverns.

To the Batpoles, Robin …

About 250 million years ago, the Chihuahuan Desert sat under the Permian Sea. The Carlsbad Caverns, on the northern edge of the desert, were formed when that sea receded, but this 400-mile reef in southeastern New Mexico remained, buried under salt and gypsum. Just a few million years ago, erosion slowly began to expose the reef, then corrosive substances, from above and below, combined to carve out the Caverns.
Archeologists say that Indians had visited the mouth of the caves many times through the centuries, but sensing evil spirits below, they never ventured inside. Later, settlers mined the bat guano or droppings available near the entrance. (Eeeeeeew! you say, but bat guano, the most nutritious, and also odorless, fertilizer still known to man, was so valuable along the frontier that, in the mid-1800s, the U.S. government passed laws to protect those mining caves for it, along with their claims, as if they were panning for Yukon gold.)

One of the many pools in the carverns.

It took an intrepid ranch-hand, Jim White, in the 1880s to bring the caves to international renown. White had seen what he thought was smoke arising from the caves and became curious. The smoke was, in reality, a cloud of millions of bats rising up out of the caves to begin their nightly hunt for insects. Strangely struck smitten with the caves, White’s spelunking adventures began a journey that led to the Caverns to being named a National Park in 1930.
Now 46,766 acres large, the Caverns have recently been designated a World Heritage Site, alongside many other American gems such as the Grand Canyon, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the volcanoes in Hawaii and the Great Smoky Mountains – all to be protected in perpetuity for the planet’s future generations.
Personally, I felt a bit under-whelmed in part by the caves. Perhaps it was due to the advertising pamphlet I picked up upon arrival in Carlsbad that over-hyped the “Big Room” down under as being the size of three-or-so Astrodomes. It had me expecting a immense open cave with a high ceiling, but that space below, while large and surprisingly airy, encompassed all the corridors and a variety of different-sized connected “rooms.”

Well-marked exhibits here.

That considered, it was, all-in-all, a stunning journey beginning with the swift walking descent down some paved but twisting ramps to 750 feet under the earth’s surface. Once far underground, you walk along paved but steep and narrow passages that open into large rooms containing famous features with monikers such as “Bottomless Pit, Hall of the Giants, Rock of Ages, Painted Grotto and the Boneyard.” Temperature-wise, it is consistently in the mid-50s, comfortable -- but you may want a pullover or a sweater.
Although there is always enough light to find your way, the caves are intermittently lit, with many of the top features high-lighted. The Park Service hired a Broadway lighting engineer to expose these aspects but, truth-be-told, I feel he missed a few spots. A flash camera allows for many great photos, and I took hundreds – great shapes, large and small -- with names like stalactites, soda straws, draperies and popcorn among others, accented by amazing colors and auras (due, no doubt, to the camera flash).
For years, a mining bucket lowered tourists down into the cave. Nowadays, a swift elevator lifts visitors back to the surface. After three hours of exploring the caves and snapping pictures, a park ranger had to chase me onto the lift, the last straggler down below that day. I truly enjoyed my extended visit, but I still wish I hadn’t read that damn pamphlet …

In front of the worldwide sightings interactive bulletin board at Roswell.

Earth to Roswell … Over?

Click HERE for slideshow

After viewing the Marfa Mystery Lights, it was only right and proper I continue north a few days later to the Mecca of the Moonbats.
After a short spell of driving through the many cattle ranches north of Carlsbad and passing many signs heralding local establishments such as the Crashsite Café and Out Of This World Tattoos, I pulled over directly across from an old theater situated along the main thoroughfare in Roswell, New Mexico.
Looking over and up at the marquee and the vertical sign above it, decorated with flying saucers and reading “UFO Museum and Research Center,” I thought, how appropriate that this joint should be housed in an 1950-60s era celluloid fantasy factory.
Once inside, however, I found that these folks take this UFO business very seriously indeed.
After meeting the true believers at the welcome desk, I proceeded to the main open room the size of … well, an old theater, where I found a variety of exhibits, which included framed newspapers front pages -- from the small-town Roswell Daily Record, of course, up to the conveniently now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and Chicago Daily News – detailing the events surrounding the early July 1947 “crash.” Also there were displays of documents demonstrating the government cover-up of the event. Some of these documents were copies; others were “recreated.” Written first-person accounts and photos accompanied many of these papers.
Also on exhibit, among other items, were a timeline of the incident and cover-up, models and written “eyewitness” descriptions of the space visitors, photos of the “saucer” debris, magazine covers and stories down through the years about the event, a crop circles photos and discussion area, letters detailing first-person accounts of alien abduction, photos taken of alien crafts in flight, an historical prospectus of cave drawings detailing pre-historic UFO visits, a section of some hilarious cartoons lampooning the crash and another detailing the movies and TV shows about the incident and Roswell itself, along with a full-scale reproduction of the medical examination of an alien. And, yes, the Marfa Mystery Lights phenomenon has its own special corner.
Two things dominate the big room: at one end is huge painted interpretation of the crash by Miller Johnson; at the other a monstrous relief map of the globe, fronted by a counter topped with buttons you can push which light up areas of reported UFO sightings and alien abductions (see above). Floating above this is a recreation of a flying saucer with rotating flashing lights.
Supporters and skeptics mix it up alongside the many exhibits. I overheard two high-school age girls going at it:
“It looks like a squid.”
“That’s not a squid."
“Aww, a squid lives underwater”
That discussion begged the question: Which is more unlikely: A squid out of water or a man from Mars?
As if …
When I was leaving, one of the believers at the counter asked me, as they request of every patron, to take a pushpin and place it upon my hometown on a nearby U.S. wall map that sat next to a world map. He said they pull these pins out at the end of every month, and since it was the first day of May, I took notice of just how many of the pins were already on the map, and of how far-flung all over the globe these places were located from which just today’s visitors had journeyed.
Yes, indeed, these folks take this UFO business very, very seriously.
And I'm being serious when I say that when you look up at so many millions of stars, many of which may have planets orbiting them, you have to wonder, Are we really alone? Look up in the night sky, there are millions - no, make that billions - of possibilities that we are not.
For me, no Little Green Men seen in Roswell, but - truthfully - isn’t it the thought that counts?

A view of the truck and trailer from atop a "Torreon", a fortress used first against  the
Apaches and later as a snipers' nest during the Linclon County Wars (see below).

Got to be Kidding me!

After the museum, it was back to the road up through the foothills northwest of Roswell. I passed some more cattle ranches, but also some fertile fields and lots of trees.

Much of this road has been designated “The Billy the Kid Scenic Byway,” which was appropriate as my next destination was Lincoln County, New Mexico, the site of the famous late-1870s “Lincoln Co. War,” a battle between cattle barons and wealthy townsfolk of which “The Kid” was a pivotal participant.The “Five Day Battle” began over some horse-thievery, featured a five-mile running gun fight and ended the lives of many a hired gunman.

Three years later, after a spectacular jailbreak and murder of two guards, “The Kid,” was shot dead in Fort Sumner, N.M. by Sheriff Pat Garrett following a prolonged manhunt.

I was tipped to Lincoln by a Key West buddy, who had visited these parts about a decade or so ago - back when New Mexico probably cared. He said this town had been left untouched since its Wild West days, save for a museum and some historical markers. I found it to be left untouched all right, but now it’s also downright neglected – a real sorry state of affairs.

I should have known after I stopped at a roadside exhibit that had been advertised by signs along the route. It was bare, its display boards stripped, with trash strewn about.
The town was deserted, and although I found several areas worth photographing, many of the more modern buildings about had For Sale signs fronting them. Depressing.
This town has been designated a state monument and, that said, New Mexico has a lot to answer for.


Closed when I arrived.



Like it or not, famous outlaw Billy the Kid’s nickname, like The Babe's or Bogart's, has been a part of the American lexicon, in “The Kid’s” case, for over a century. If a state is going to use that name and folklore to promote its areas, it ought to take care of said advertised area.

A real shame! 'Nuff said.
Later, traveling west, I may have found the root of the problem. The many roadside signs advertising “Tribal Homeland of the Mescalero Apaches” should have read “Home of the Tribal Casinos.” I counted three such joints is just about 10 miles as I crossed through a small chunk of a very large reservation. Perhaps the state is putting all their dough into promoting the casinos instead of its cowboy past. Sure seems that way.
As for me, I liked the TV show “The Rifleman’ as a kid, but to tell you the truth, I always thought that “F-Troop” looked like more fun.

Small section of space vehicles displayed outside New Mexico Museum of Space History.

Space ghosts – coast to coast

Next I journeyed to Alamogordo, New Mexico, the home of the New Mexico Museum of Space History.
When the Air Force got into the outer space business in the 1950s, after searching for a home base, they found southwestern New Mexico to be made to order for its experiments: a sparse population, very high elevations, a southern latitude and predictable weather patterns. And so, facilitated by some captured Nazi scientists, American rocketry was born.

Lots of fun exhibits here.

The hillside museum is surrounded by many full-scale representations of space and rockets, et al, and makes for some fine photographs. Inside it chock full of interesting NASA exhibits, telling the space tale from the get-go, as well as some interactive displays. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t become an astronaut as I crashed the Space Shuttle twice while interactively trying to land it, making quite a bit of noise.
There also was a scale demonstrating your lessened weight, due to lower gravity, on the Moon or Mars. I won’t tell you what my weight was on other planets but, suffice to say, if my doctor was beside me when it registered, the first thing out of her mouth would have been, “How soon can you pack?,” quickly followed by “When’s the next launch?”

In Mercury Program capsule
 outside museum.

Jumping ahead but keeping with the space theme, a few days later, twice on the road to Arizona, once going north on Highway 25 and later heading west on Highway 60, I passed two barren plains, distinctive only for the reason that both were fronted by signs claiming each to be the “Future Home of New Mexico’s Spaceport.”
These signs were separated by hours of driving time, and so, if both are correct, that’s going to be one hell of a place to loop around while waiting for your party to land on their flight back from, oh … say … the moons around Jupiter.
A spaceport! I know I’m dating myself, but it sounds like something right out of a Tom Swift book. I just hope I live to see it.

Red Sox Nation, Part II

At a comfortable RV Park in Alamogordo, I met Allan and Pauline, a wonderfully welcoming retired couple. He was in textiles, she the office manager for some lucky CPAs. Originally from Britain, but then longtime Long Island residents, they decided to rent out their Florida retirement haven and now are just slowly touring the country in their RV for, as Pauline says, “As long as it takes, wherever it takes us.”
One of the evenings I was there, the Red Sox were supposed to be playing the Yankees on ESPN. The game was rained out, but that didn’t stop us from talking a little baseball. Allan said he was mystified at first by the sport, being from Britain and all, but after the rules were explained to him, he visited Yankee Stadium many times, and even Shea a couple of times. Though his heart is with the Yankees, being from Long Island and all, he always liked Carl Yastrzemski, going so far as to demonstrate the Hall of Famer’s peculiar batting style.
As the baseball talk was winding down, Allan turns to me and says, with a British accent, but American syntax, “Did you ever think that you’d be sitting in New Mexico … talking to a British guy … about Yaz?

Really dry at White Sands, the search for water paramount among the flora and fauna here.

Let it sand, let it sand, let it sand...

These are campsites here!

Also in the Alamogordo area is the White Sands National Monument. And just as advertised, it’s a heck of a lot of white sand. Surrounded completly by the White Sands Missile Range, it is 275 square-mile basin of white sand, formed when that pesky Permian Sea receded and left behind this fine gypsum powder. Since no river drains this basin, it still stands today.
Ringed by the San Andreas and Sacramento mountain ranges, this area makes for some fine photos.
The Dune Life Nature Trail had been suggested to me by the park ranger, so I walked it. It was only about a mile over the dunes. Throughout the printed guide it talked about the shifting sands swallowing things wholesale, and I found this to be true along this trail: a lot of the wooden markers were denoting … I don’t know, something gobbled up by the sand, I guess.

Not so stealthy.

As I cruised around the park, I was struck by its resemblance to ski country in northern New England after a deep snowfall. Got to give the Park Service credit though. They had just over a half-million visitors here last year.
Also of note, as I was in the park, I watched four stealth bombers take off from nearby Holloman AFB. They were heading northeast and I recognized the telltale roars and shapes from several flyovers at a couple of Indy 500s I attended in past years with the Captain.
In closing this item, in my never-ending quest to address someone – anyone – around here without them shooting back a sideways glance and asking “Where you from?,” the ranger at the Visitor Center thought my accent was Australian. I’m out there all right, but not that far!

A dish, one of many here, shown at main building at National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Over the hills & very far away

Cruising along Highway 60 heading west, one begins to see huge satellite dishes along the north side of the highway -- way too many of them for it to be a coincidence.
Finally a roadside sign told the tale, this was the site of a National Radio Astronomy Observatory or Very Large Array Radio Telescope.
Featured in Hollywood movies like Jodie Foster's "Contact", these satellite dishes are spread over a 27-mile area and have made more scientific discoveries in outer space than any other such ground-based instrument in history. Some of these dishes are in fixed positions while others in outlying areas are on railroad tracks so they can be moved about as calculations change.
As I approached and then got underneath one of the monsterous dishes on the walking tour of the facility, I couldn’t help thinking that, with a little tinkering, I could get all the pay-per-view channels with this baby.
Driving down the access road to the VLA area, I had been surprised by a pack of antelopes charging across the plains toward the truck. Some crossed the road just in front of the truck, the others veering off behind it. It was so startling, I was late with the camera.
At first, I thought they were whitetail deer, same size and color, but the aggressive manner of the pack, the way they leapt over the berm at the side of the road and their oddly shaped horns told me otherwise.
Once more demonstrating my lack of accrued knowledge, I had no idea that there are North American antelope as well as African, but a fellow working at the VLA Visitors Center set me straight, adding “There’s so many of 'em around here, they got a season for ‘em. But, most folks hunt ‘em for their racks, ‘cuz they ain’t much in the eating department.”

Rolling uphill into the high desert toward Arizona, I first crossed The Contiental Divide.

School kids & Samaritans

After leaving The VLA area, I cruised west through the Cibola National Forest, the elevation rising with each mile as I approached the Continental Divide (elev. 7,796 feet). It was getting cooler by the second, but the situation was about to heat up…
Just west of the Divide roadside marker sits the tiny hamlet of Pie Town (you can probably guess what’s they’re selling). I rolled on through on through, stopping only to photograph the Pie Festival sign for posterity.
A few miles out of town, I felt a rumbling coming from the truck. I stopped to investigate. Oh No! Another blowout -- this one on the right rear of the truck itself. Uugghh!
Lots of railroad tracks around those satellite dishes. I’ve got to learn to take it slow going over tracks. They are everywhere out here and I’ve got a lot weight on this combination rig.
With no cell phone signal available, I was on my own. The Triple-A cavalry wasn’t coming to the rescue this time. Curses! But I was not left to my own devices for long. As if a wish came true, two young guys drove by me, then doubled back to help out. This pair of teenagers, Lester and Kyle, were from the Pie Town area and, as far as I was concerned, straight from heaven, prayers answered.
At first I lied, saying I was OK with this, I’d get it done, but they literally took over – quickly jacking up the trailer to free the truck, crawling under the truck to release the spare and then changing the tire – all because, as Lester said, “It’s right to help somebody out if they need it.”
As they were leaving, I offered them a few bucks, but they refused. When they were working on the tire, they had told me they both were heading off to school in the fall, so I again offered, telling them to put the money in their college funds. And again they demurred, Kyle saying, “Nah, but thanks all the same … Just happy to help you out.”
We shook hands and, as they drove away, I was dumbfounded. Be honest with yourself, admit it – I calculate the odds of that situation, never mind its financial finishing touch, happening in the Northeast to be about the same as a 100-year flood.
Next town down the line, Quemado, I stopped and purchased a new radial and, though the shop was busy, it was speedily mounted on the truck. The whole “crisis,” from flat to finish, took about an hour-and-a-half. Amazing! Must be something about the fresh air up here.
In case you’re keeping score at home, it’s now:
Southwest train tracks ….. 2
Truck and trailer tires .….. 0
Or, more realistically, three old tires down, three to go……
Just waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Over the rainbow …

I’m heading west, bound for the Grand Canyon this weekend with a few stops first, then north to South Utah for a visit to some of the National Parks clustered there.