My Life and Travels
We drove to Pancho Villa State Park this morning.
This military action just before World War I was the first time the U.S. Army used a mechanized military force. They had four wheel drive vehicles and airplanes.
Look the way the landing gear was attached to the airplane.
Here is a closer look.
The state park is 30 south of here and 2 miles north of the border. It was a nice drive.
We stayed home and a did lot of nothing.
Hank and I took a short hike around the park.
We have nice view over the valley, our motorhome is in the center.
This is flower about the size of a quarter.
This was lunch.
It was a great day.
We went to Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument north of Deming. It was a long drive from Deming, looking at the map it is not to far, however half of road was a paved logging road. It was actually fun to drive. Poor Hank had to stay at home, he had an eight hour wait.
These dwellings are half way up a 400 foot rock face.
There were three volunteers at the dwellings telling the story of the people who lived here.
This is a view in the largest room.
It is a neat place out in the middle of no where.
We moved today to Rock Hound State Park 10 miles southeast of Deming, NM. Since just before dark we have had wind, rain and some lightening.
This is the view when we arrived.
Campsite photos, these are really large sites and we have the highest one in the park. Yes it’s a great view.
Another site pictures.
Yesterday during our trip north we also visited Smokey Bear Historical Park
Smokey Bear was a cub when he was found clinging to a tree after a fire had burned through the forest near Capitan, NM. He was taken to a vet and than became the mascot for preventing forest fires. Hank was not allowed in the museum so Jean and I took turns caring for Hank and looking at the displays.
Smokey was laid to rest here.
Here are a couple of pictures I took at Fort Stanton.
Housing on officer’s row.
The area has an active group of people supporting the history of this fort. This is one of several people working around the fort and answering people’s questions.
After Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me we drove north to Fort Stanton.
It has an interesting history from 1855 when it was first established, 1899 Marine Hospital for care of tuberculosis, 1933 – 1940 as a CCC camp, 1939 – 1945 prisoner of war camp for German sailors, 1963 – 1996 facility for the care of mentally challenged, 1996 – 1999 State Corrections Facility of women, 2000 – 2009 drug rehabilitation center, 2008 state monument.
Tomorrow we leave for Rockhound State Park south of Deming, NM.
It was a good day, and Hank got to travel with us today.
Today we went to the National Solar Observatory
This is the part which is above ground. We were able to go inside this building and watch as they were taking observations of the sun.
This drawing shows the relationship of the above ground structure and what is below ground.
The observatory is only 6.29 miles east and a little north of here. This is from Google earth. The drive to get there is 50 miles.
This picture show’s the distance. The elevation change is from 4420 to 9256.
Here is the whole area showing where we are, the Observatory, White Sands and Alamogrodo.
We spent the day at New Mexico Museum of Space History. It is a really cool museum.
Had a great day.
We spent an additional 4 hours at the Very Large Array today. It was the first Saturday of the month behind the scenes tours and this month was the semi-annual expanded tours. One of the people participating in the tours was Barry Clark one of the scientist’s who wrote and got the original approval for the VLA back in the early 70’s.
They just finished a ten year updating of the electronics including the computer system.
Read the last paragraph, it’s faster then my Dell.
The tour was really interest and we learned a lot about the VLA. The tour was organized by a group of scientists. The tour started at the admin building which is about 150 yards from the visitor’s center. This picture shows the distance.
They had made this sign so everyone would know where the tour’s start.
Here’s the challenge, the sign is with the yellow flags 150 yards away from the visitor’s center from where you could see the flags but not the sign.
Here is some information about the place we are camped.
We have taken a lot of pictures during this trip, however we are using my cellphone for internet access so I’m not posting may pictures.
Here is one from my paddle board outing with Vickie.
The sand at White Sands is really white.
I took this picture so there would be something in the picture that wasn’t just white.
One with a couple of plants.
This is the edge of one of dunes.
and I have a bunch of pictures showing the waves in the sand. Hank had a great time walking around on the sand.
This evening I took a bunch of night pictures. It is really hard to believe how many stars there are in the sky. The Milky Way is much easier to see in a picture, these are all about 20 seconds long.
I just missed a shooting star in this picture, it was just to the left of my picture.
Today we drove across White Sands Missile Range to get to this state park. We’ll be here for several days as we explore this area.
This is the first park I’ve ever stayed at where all the sites were wide spots in the road. No actual a pull through site or site to back in, interesting.
I want to go back and add a couple of pictures for Fr. Selden, it was an interesting place.
The fort was built out of adobe and they are washing away with time.
One end of the parade ground to the other.
This is an amazing bronze sculpture of a buffalo soldier our served at this fort.
We found one Lange Pvt I from the 8th Cavalry who served at this fort, on dates for first name with listed on the roster.