Our Travels, Fall 2017

This has not been a good year technology wise. I lost most of my pictures, since recovered, my travel maps just disappeared from Google, my phone went into a loop with an update and I had to do a factory reset. All of these are very time consuming besides everything else going on.

This posting finishes up our trip to/including Phoenix. We will begin traveling next week and I will start a new posting with a new map.

Alamogordo:

Great visit to a neat town with lots to do and see. We visited the New Mexico Museum of Space History .White Sands at different times of the day, Sun Spot(where numerous telescopes are). The mind is a little muddy and I hope the pictures bring back some of the highlights.

New Mexico Museum of Space History:

The New Mexico Museum of Space History was under construction changing exhibits so parts of it were no accessible. The museum is a neat place to visit and bringsback memories of the US space program. We thoroughly enjoyed the museum and its memories. Excelent movie in the theater. There was even a section dedicated to Star Trek and its impact on the space program.

Elevator Doors

Inside of Elevator, gave us pause

Patch from every launch

White Sands National Monument:

White Sands National Monument is always a great place to visit. For the kids, the visitor center sells saucers to slide down the sand dunes. The dunes are hard to walk on and my new knee wasn't happy about the dunes. For this trip we had some limits, actually many, due to the knee. The sand dunes are not really sand but gypsum, 275 square miles of constantly moving gypsum. The gypsum is very fine, very bright white and blows easily. We met several road graders plowing the road for the tourists. The best time to visit is dusk, at that time you see the dunes much better in the waning sun,

Several lizards and other animals who live in the gypsum field have evolved to being white versus the normal brown/green. We didn't see any but would have loved to.

White Sands is closed a couple times a week as it resides in the middle of the missile range so for safety reasons when they are shooting missiles off the road and White Sands are closed.

Sunspot, National Solar Observatory:

We took a drive to Sunspot, great views but there were no tours the day we went. This is a complex of 4-6 telescopes and the National Solar Observatory is located here. The visitor center was not open for some reason so we were disappointed. Very nice drive though in the high country. The neat park of the drive, besides the scenery, was we drove through the solar system, there was a sign every so often with the name of a planet. When we reached Sunspot, we were at the Sun.

We found a  brochure and did a self tour, would  have loved to have the docent tour but that wasn't
meant to be.

White Sands Missile Range:

We went to the range and it was a production to get to the displays. We had to go through a background check(took about 20-30 minutes). Then walk 1/4 mile to to the exhibit. I gave up but Tom enjoyed the exhibit. We managed to get mixed up trying to leave, the exit was not clearly marked, so we attracted the attention of some armed guards as we were heading to a restricted  area. After that little bit of excitement, we were allowed to turn around and leave.

Pistachio's:

One of the unique features of the Alamagordo area was the number of Pistachio farms. Very surprising and very good pistachios. We stocked up on pistachios and also saw the world's largest pistachios.

VLRA(Very Large Radio Array):

Radio Telescopes are across the Earth, all coordinated with each other. These telescopes pick up radio frequencies from the galaxy, very weak signals. The telescope here is 22 miles across, there are 3 legs of scopes and the antennae are moved 4 times a year. A total of 28 antennae, each 82' across on railroad tracks are moved 4 times a year. Each telescope weight 230 tons. The altitude is at 7000' and the high desert has extremely low humidity for better reception.

Chaco Culture National Historical Site and the Canyon de Chile(chay) have been on our list for a long time. We finally managed to find time to visit them.


Chaco Culture National Historical Site:

The drive to Chaco was a challenge, 25+ miles of dirt road and open range. The road was poor plus  in open range so we had to deal with steer. Chaco has an admission fee of $20(we have our Senior Pass), we thought they should pay us for visiting them. We decided to take a different road home and amazingly enough it was worse than  the road in.

Chaco is considered the center of the ancient world. Thousands of Pueblo Indians lived here from 850 to 1250 AD and then they disappeared. Their engineering and organizational abilities were the best seen in the American Southwest. Looking at the buildings still standing we were amazed at the construction techniques.

The Pueblo also built towers across the desert for navigation, steps up steep rock walls. Just an amazing people. I would consider them our first true engineers.

Chaco is also a dark sky location for star gazing. Having been at several dark sky locations if you have a chance to go to one, do it. You will be amazed at how many stars are in the sky.

Canyon de Chelly(chey):

This was our next stop, after Chaco we were prepared for the worse and pleasantly surprised. Chile is on out outskirts of  Chinle, AZ.

This canyon has been occupied for 5000 years, longest on the Colorado Plateau. Originally occupied by the Pueblo today the Navajo live in the canyon, raising crops and cattle. There are gorgeous views from the north and south side of the canyon but the real beauty is when you take a jeep tour with a Navajo guide. Well worth it. The tour is rough, if you have back problems don't go. This was a highlight of our trip. The tour takes about 3 hours and you are in and out of the jeep constantly. Our guide knew his history and was very proud(well justified) of the Navajo people.

Phoenix:

We finally arrived in Phoenix in late October. I  had made many doctor appointments so we spent Nov and Dec at doctor offices and getting lab work done. We were also busy with family: soccer each week, ASU concerts, Girls Scout Cookie Sales, Pine Wood Derby and on and on. Kept us busy. Things slowed down a bit for a week here and there and then baseball season started. Totally enjoyable.

Apache Trail:

We had a hard time finding time for some field trips. We weren't too  diligent blocking time for ourselves. We finally managed to spend a day driving the Apache Trail. After the dirt roads of Chaco we managed to find another 25 miles of very narrow dirt roads cut into the side of  a mountain

The Apache Trail

Apache Trail is a scenic drive very close to Phoenix. The Trail passes 3 large lakes, one with a boat tour that we will take next year. The Trail is a fair distance from our campground so we need to dedicate a full day to the drive. The Trial passes Lost Dutchman State Park and
 Goldfield Ghost Town, we need to come back and visit these.

The road that composes the Trail varies from rough to dirt(25 miles), passes 3 beautiful lakes, has many scenic turnouts and is not for the fainthearted. Besides the road being paved, but roughly, and then cut into the side of a mountain on the dirt part of the road, which was 1 1/2 cars wide, we met 2 road graders we had to pass. Took us a long  time to drive these 25 miles, besides the graders we kept having to pull over to allow a car coming toward us to get through. I was glad when this day was done.

This completes our trip to Phoenix for this year. We plan to leave in late April and meander back to Williamsburg, stop and  smell the roses as we go along. I will start a new section of the blog for our return trip.