New Mexico - Day 18 - A day in Albuquerque

Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo

Thursday, 18 November 2021

part of today's route

On the road

The main AAA map is too compressed to show any detail of this area, and the area map above doesn't start until the ABQ city limits.  I chose to ignore the interstate and come into town on NM-47, also known as 2nd Street in Albuquerque.  I discovered that 2nd Street has several pieces of art along its length, including a nice sculpture of a Nuthatch.

I saw 3 hot air balloons ascending just west of town.  Albuquerque claims the title of Hot Air Ballooning Capital of the World because of its unusual set of conditions that create an ideal setting for the sport.  They have predictable wind patterns, plenty of open space, and cool early-morning temps that allow balloons to rise faster.  Their annual balloon fiesta starts the first week of October each year, so I just missed it by a month.  I'm sure it's an amazing sight, and I'd like to come sometime.

Getting here I drove through a very residential neighborhood and had plenty of time to see that adobe is the primary building material in this area.  At least, that was my thought until I realized some of these houses looked more like stucco.  I've been trying to find someplace online that'll explain the difference to me and honestly, they sound a lot alike.  Here's a page I found from someone who builds these kinds of houses here in New Mexico, and it includes some discussion of the composition of each type.   http://pajaconstruction.com/adobe-plaster-or-conventional-stucco  

But of course, being uneducated, I don't know the difference by looking at them, and then I found this page where the focus is on the style, rather than the building material, and I think that's what I've been noticing.  The buildings I've been seeing all over, ever since before Taos, have very likely been adobe, but what I've actually been noticing has been that Pueblo style of design - rounded corners and so forth.  Then I found this page - Wikipedia, of course - that explains what I've been looking at is most likely what's called Pueblo Revival, a style that's most popular in New Mexico, though it's found in surrounding states.  It was even established by law in Santa Fe in 1957.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Pueblo-Revival-architecture  Whatever it is, there's a lot of it in this neighborhood.

Rio Grande Nature Center

There are 2 similarly named parks in ABQ, one run by the state and the other by the city.  The one I visited is the state park, set on the east bank of the Rio Grande.  They require a $3/vehicle/day fee, which seemed reasonable.

I easily found the path Paula had mentioned for the dogs, because I saw several other people taking their dogs in or leading them out of the area.  I just couldn't take the chance on taking my dogs into an area where it was almost guaranteed we'd meet other dogs on a narrow trail.  And that instinct turned out to be right: I took the dogs around the large parking area instead and while we were out, a guy and his dog came past from that walking area, and Dexter started going crazy as he often does.  Jumping around and barking and generally carrying on.  The other guy stopped - I don't know why people do that, but a lot of them do - and I told him to please keep on going, which he did, and Dexter calmed down as soon as they'd moved on.  I'd been bracing myself against a thick wooden pole to keep him from pulling me over, and I was glad for the reinforcement.

The park prohibits dogs from going on the nature trails, which makes sense to keep them from scaring wild critters, but I really don't like to take long walks any more without them.  They need the exercise as much as I do, and I don't want to wear myself out walking alone and then not having energy left for them.  This meant I started off into the park, but turned around after a fairly short distance when I realized all that was in there was long, winding paths leading to various viewing areas and gardens.

I'd gotten there about 8:30, hoping to avoid other dogs (that didn't work), but once there I found the visitor center didn't open until 10:00 and that seemed to be where the information about the Rio Grande Rift was.  So the dogs and I walked around the area some more, and I looked through the wildlife viewing holes at the Wetlands Overlook - lots of duckies, mostly.  While we were walking some large birds flew overhead singing.  Very large birds.  And I finally realized they must be Sandhill Cranes.  Apparently ABQ is a prime wintering spot for them.

When the visitor center finally opened, I did find some information about the Rift.  Unlike most other river valleys that were created by their rivers, this one got the river after the rift had been created.

The ground in this area sank 25,000,000 years ago along fault lines, creating the rift that was 25 - 30 miles across.  Unusually, it wasn't caused by erosion or earthquakes or any of the usual forces but instead, over (a lot of) time, this section of the earth between the fault lines just stretched and sank.

The Rio Grande is only about 50,000 years old and apparently just used the channel that had already been created.  Here's information about the river itself.

The numbers on this map correspond to
the numbers on the photos below.

These are photos taken at the locations
shown on the map above.

Naturalists have learned to undo some of the damage that earlier generations inflicted on our land - reconstructed wetlands and grassy plains and so forth.  But regenerating the Rio Grande is unlikely to happen.  Too many people depend on it in its present form now.

And here's one of the unfortunate byproducts of those changes.

I know cottonwood isn't universally popular because of its ability to trigger allergic reactions.  But it doesn't have that effect on me and I love the way they look and the shade they create, so their loss matters to me.  This is almost enough to make me want to run out and find a home where I can plant lots of cottonwoods.

The visitor center had a lot of other information, of course, about the many forms of life in this area - types of fish and invertebrates and so forth.  I found this information about beavers.

And there were also exhibits about bird migrations, though it was hard for me to take photos of them because of the lighting.  But here's information about the migration habits of a few interesting species.

I also learned that ABQ has more extinct volcanoes in the vicinity than any other city in the Lower 48 states.  Glad to hear they're extinct.

So this visit didn't turn out as I'd expected, but I still learned a lot.

Back on the road in ABQ

We drove from there to a Total Wine shop, that had a remarkably poor selection of wine (almost none from the Pacific Northwest, for instance) but they did have my favorite brand of scotch so I forgave them.

We went to a grocery store and a park and then to a Jiffy Lube.  It was about time for a routine oil change.  The hardest part about that is finding a shop with doors tall enough to let us in.  I'd called a half-dozen places of various brands before finding this one.  The folks here seemed a little intimidated, but after all it's just got an ordinary Ford engine, so they were able to do the work.  

I'm once again glad about the choice of RV I made.  It may be hard to find a shop with 11' clearance on their doors - but my RV is a lot lower - and shorter - than many other types.  And with the ordinary engine, I can get regular mechanics to work on it without having to locate some RV-specific mechanic as some have to do.

I didn't get to see a lot of Albuquerque that I'd have like to - the balloon museum and Old Town and just more of the town in general.  But we spent more time at the nature center than I'd expected, and sunset is before 5:00 these days at this latitude, so I just added these things to my growing list of places to see when I come back to NM with more time.

New Mexico - Day 17 - in the campground

Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo

Wednesday, 17 November 2021

After the long drive yesterday, I didn't much want to jump up and drive somewhere else today, even for sightseeing.  Plus, Bernalillo is above 5,000' elevation, so in case altitude is what's causing me problems, I wanted to take a bit of time to adjust.

I'm much better than I was a couple of weeks ago, but I'm still having periods of dizziness and headaches.  Fortunately, the nausea has nearly gone away, so that's a plus.

This is a pretty decent campground and has 2 fenced-in dog yards.  One has lots of drawings across the wall showing dogs playing or with bones or sailing on a ship or like that.  The other has a large wall covered with a quote from Robert Benchley: A dog teaches fidelity, perseverance, and how to turn three times around before lying down.

The campground owner must know someone who can do murals, because another long wall of the campground showed a series of things visitors to the area could do.  One section showed the various places people could go fishing.  Another showed wineries and breweries.  Another showed restaurants, while still another showed where to buy chiles and chile sauce.  And there were maybe 3 or 4 more sections with different attractions like that.  I thought it was clever.

I wanted to know more about that Rio Grande Rift that I'd traveled across on my way to Taos, and my friend Paula told me she'd found some information about it at the Rio Grande Nature Center in ABQ.  And she told me about a path near there where people could walk their dogs.  I wanted to see a little more of Albuquerque, plus I had a few errands to run, so I mapped out a driving route to do those things on one day.

I also mapped out driving routes to two places didn't want to leave New Mexico without visiting: the state capital, Santa Fe, and Los Alamos, the center for the Manhattan Project.  Not far from those places were 2 other sights my friend Bruce had suggested that I wanted to see if I had time: Valles Caldera, an extinct volcano; Bandelier National Monument, with remains of ancient cliff dwellings.  Those two, though, were above 10,000', so I tried not to set my heart on seeing them but figured I'd play it by ear.

I also managed to write 2 blog posts, so now I'm only 2 weeks behind.  Oh well.  And I made reservations for where I'll be going when I leave this area.

All told, it was an action-packed day.

New Mexico - Day 16 - the rural route north to Bernalillo

Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo

Tuesday, 16 November 2021

today's route

Today we crossed about 2/3 of the state - it was 240 miles of the 370 miles that NM is north to south.

I'd originally chosen this route because I saw there are 2 ruins along the way and thought I'd want to stop at at least one of them.  After I looked them up, though, I changed my mind.  As far as I could tell, these are mostly ruins of buildings Spanish missionaries built, and not so much those of the Native Americans that lived in the area.  I'm sure they're interesting, but that's just not how I wanted to spend my limited time.  Especially when Google promised this drive would take 4 hours - meaning 7 or 8 for me - even without stops.

Still, I decided this route might be more interesting than cutting over to the interstate, as Google kept trying to insist on.

On the road

Instead of turning into the mountains at Tularosa, which would take us back over to Roswell, we went north on US-54.  I saw green cropfields (so incongruous in mid-November, but this is a lot farther south than, say, Wyoming).  But mostly I saw sagebrush desert with mountains on either side of the road.

At Three Rivers, I passed the turn for petroglyphs and wished once again that I had more time.  The BLM is in charge of this site which has more than 21,000 petroglyphs.  Imagine.  Here's a short description and a photo of one of the pieces of art.   https://www.blm.gov/three-rivers-petroglyph-site  I wonder when this area will be given more protection than the BLM can usually provide.

At the town of Oscuro, I saw a sign for the Oscuro Bombing Range.  This seemed odd to me, so I looked it up and found it's part of an Air Force program that works with White Sands Missile Range.   https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/oscura.htm  This website that gave me information about this program seemed a little strange, with a lot of ads that seemed anti-Biden.  Him being the president and commander-in-chief, it seemed odd that a site talking about a military program would have this sort of thing advertised.  But what do I know.  I usually shorten the URL to fit better on the blog page, but this time I kept the whole thing in case it means something to someone.

I came to the town of Carrizozo, elevation 5,425'.  "Carrizo" means reed grass, and the extra "zo" suggests abundance.  The population exploded when the railroad came through in 1899, and a 1909 county referendum decided to move the Lincoln County seat here from Lincoln.  For some reason, this was so controversial it had to be decided by the US Supreme Court.  Carrizozo won.

When the railroad declined in importance, so did the town, and the current population stands at 933.  It sounds like the town is trying to reinvent itself as an artists' colony, apparently with some success.  So this is one tiny town that shouldn't be counted out yet.

From here, the mountains started to fade into the distance and instead, I was seeing a broad area of sageland with hills.  I missed the turn for the state road that would take me to the ruins and had to go back about 15 miles or so.  New Mexico just doesn't mark roads the way I'd wish they did, but I found the right road eventually.

The difference between US-54 and NM-55 was like that between an interstate and a local road - stark.  But rewarding in an odd way: on US-54 I felt like an observer, as if from a passing train; on NM-55 I felt like I was walking in the middle of all I'd been observing.

At first what I saw was sage and grass - fairly tall grass, up to maybe 4'.  Then I saw all grass.  Eventually that changed to grass with cactus, and later to grass with juniper.

I passed through Claunch, which claims about 50 residents, but I don't know where they were.  I saw buildings for a community church and a women's club, and I saw a cemetery.  But there were no stores and no buildings that looked inhabited.

At another place, I passed workers operating large heavy machinery at the site of a small brick building without a roof.  I couldn't tell what the workers were doing or how they got to the work site, as there were no vehicles other than the very large machinery.

In fact, for the entire drive I saw only 7 vehicles coming toward me and only 1 that was going my way.

I came to the turn for the Gran Quivira Ruins, and found this marker:

And for some actual information about this site, here's a brief explanation from the park service.   https://www.nps.gov/gran-quivira  Actually, it sounds like a place I'd like to visit if I had more time to spend here.

But here's what I've been wondering about: how did these people find each other out here?  The park service says this was a huge settlement for hundreds of years - but how did the Spanish find it?  Twice?  This area is so covered with hills that it's impossible to see very far in the distance, so the Spanish couldn't have just stood on a handy hill and looked and seen this city.  And if no Europeans had been here before, how did they find it this first time?  It's not like they'd been given compass directions by someone.  With all these stories we've read about early explorers and early parties of settlers and so forth - how did they know where they were going?  I get lost when I'm on marked highways with a map.

After more than 60 miles on this bumpy, narrow state road, we came to the town of Mountainair, home of the Historic Shaffer Hotel.  At least, that's what their advertising said.  When I went online to find out what made it historic, I found this odd blog post about it.   https://cityofdust.blogspot.com/shaffer-hotel-mountainair-nm  He said the town was named for fresh mountain breezes; I say there was a constant very hard wind blowing the whole time we were there.

I wanted to stop and let the dogs out but, for the life of me, I couldn't find a park or a church that wasn't being used.  I finally found a school in a residential neighborhood and tried to walk the dogs there.  We immediately discovered that every single house had at least one, usually two, large dogs living there, all of which were outside in their yards, telling us to stay away.  And where there weren't dogs, there were stickers and/or litter.  And while we were still out, a city work crew came along and raised a bunch of dust while they worked on a pothole near where we'd parked.  I apologized to the dogs for having picked a place that really wasn't fit to walk in.

As we were leaving town, I saw a sign on a fence at a home: Bad Ass Dog On Duty.

From Mountainair, I could have taken a road north 8 miles to the Quarai Ruins.  The situation there sounds much like that at the Gran Quivira ruins - both are managed by the National Park Service; both document long-time Native settlements; both have ruins of churches built by Spanish priests from the 1600s.  Quarai does have some unique features that are described at this website.   https://www.legendsofamerica.com/quarai-mission

Instead of doing that, we picked up US-60, which a sign told me was on the Salt Missions Trail.  I wondered why it referred to salt missions and found this page that describes the history of this state scenic byway and notes that it passes a number of dried lakes whose beds provided salt for both local residents and passing trade caravans.

A short way along the road I came to the town of Abo, and found another historical marker that indicated local ruins were part of the same situation found in Gran Quivira and Quarai.  Here's a link to the marker.   https://www.hmdb.org/abo-ruins

As I drove, I kept seeing those falling rocks signs.  But I also saw signs that said, "Removing Rocks from Right-of-Way Prohibited."  Huh?  I'm supposed to keep my eyes open for rocks that might have fallen on the road but I'm not allowed to get them out of the line of traffic?  What if it's a rock that's too big to drive over and falls in a place that I can't drive around?  Never mind.  I didn't see any more fallen rocks than I've seen elk.

I did see a sign that said, "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh."  Which sounds kind of awful.  I'm not a Biblical scholar, but I don't remember Jesus ever talking about following him being so hard.  Unless you're rich, of course.

I wanted to avoid the interstate as long as I could, so I turned north on NM-47 that ran through a string of local towns for 40 miles.  I passed through an area that at first I thought was a collection of towns called Rio Communities.  But I finally saw a sign that said something about the City of Rio Communities, which just seems an odd name.

There there were Tome, which I also saw written as Tomé, which I think is Spanish for the verb to take, which makes this an interesting name.  I passed through Los Lunas and Peralta.  Note the strong Spanish influence in this state.  Then Bosque Farms, elev. 4,866' (Bosque means forest in Spanish), followed by the Isleta Reservation boundary.

I joined I-25 to get through the traffic of Albuquerque.  The airport code here is ABQ, and I saw that abbreviation everywhere because, let's face it, Albuquerque isn't all that easy to write.

I passed signs telling me there's a Historic Old Town here, and a balloon museum, both of which sound interesting if I have time.

I crossed the Sandia Reservation boundary near Bernalillo, which is just north of ABQ and is where my campground is for the next few days.

New Mexico - Days 14 - 15 - in the campground

White Sands/Alamogordo KOA, Alamogordo
Sunday, 14 and Monday, 15 November 2021

This was a fairly comfortable campground for us - large enough for us to be able to find places to walk while avoiding other dogs, yet not so big that we'd be swamped with other campers.  And once the weekend was over, much of the campground cleared out, so it was easier for us to find room.

Several times during this trip I've noticed people towing their 5th wheel with a tractor - you know, the front end of a tractor-trailer, a semi.  It sure seems like overkill to me, when an ordinary heavy-duty pickup will do the job.  But people use them.  While I was here, I saw a tractor with a small car perched behind the cab and somehow had a 5th wheel attached to all that.  Those folks must stay a while after they've moved somewhere.

A clerk at a local grocery store told me this town is all about military and tourism.  She said there are actually 3 military bases in the area, counting Fort Bliss down in El Paso, which is less than an hour and a half away. 

She also told me that until last year, the German Luftwaffe had been training pilots in this area, dating back several decades.  It was locally considered a boon to merchants and to the town in general, so they're sorry to see the Germans go.

Gracie's still having trouble that must be related to that stroke from last May.  One morning she was standing at the water bowl, and I watched her just collapse in slow motion.  It didn't look like it does when she lies down suddenly, which she does fairly often.  This was a collapse.  But she otherwise seems healthy so I'm hopeful she'll still be able to live happily for several more years.  Her annual vet check-up is next month and I'll see if a vet whose never seen her before can give me an assessment of her condition.

I managed to start on the backlog of posts for New Mexico - about time since I've been here half a month already.

My weird symptoms are still gradually abating, but they're not going away entirely, which makes me think the problem isn't altitude and it isn't different drug manufacturers.  But I'll see what I feel like when we go back north to the Albuquerque area, at a higher altitude.

New Mexico - Day 13 - White Sands National Park

White Sands/Alamogordo KOA, Alamogordo

Saturday, 13 November 2021

today's route

the bigger picture

On the road

I decided to leave fairly early this morning, not because I hoped to see a lot of animals, but because I hoped to avoid seeing a lot of humans.  Today was a Saturday, after all, and I was afraid there'd be a crowd.

I don't think I'd even left the city limits when I came to a sign telling me I was entering White Sands Missile Range (shown in that pinkish color in the lower map above).  Another sign said the missile range is "Birthplace of America's Missile and Space Activity."  The Army says that title came from 75 years and more than 42,000 rocket and missile tests on "the premier military test range in America."  

Another sign said, "When Lights Flash, I-70 Closed - Expect 1 Hour Delay."  You can see from the map that White Sands National Monument (now designated a national park) is inside the missile range boundary.  The Army and the National Park Service cooperate to allow both sets of activities: the Army gives the park service notice of upcoming tests; the park service shuts down all activities inside the park, including backcountry hikes and camping, for 3 hours to allow the tests, and the park service posts upcoming closures on its website so people can plan ahead.  But as the sign above notes, it's not just the park but the entire interstate highway that closes.  The highway runs right through the missile range too.  Strange set-up.

The missile range was one of the key locations of the Manhattan Project during WWII, and this is where they tested the world's first atomic bomb in 1945.  Here's some information about that test, and the aftermath.   https://www.nps.gov/trinity-site  Robert Oppenheimer, called the Father of the Atomic Bomb, chose the name Trinity for this site, based on his love for John Donne's poetry.  Really.  Life is full of ironies.

White Sands was changed from a national monument to a national park less than 2 years ago when Pres. Trump signed that year's defense authorization act.  There's a brief but interesting explanation of why that was done at this park service page:   https://www.nps.gov/news  And there's a more thorough, though colloquial, explanation of the differences between the two designations at this page:   https://www.orbitz.com/blog/park-vs-monument

White Sands National Park

The entrance is 17 miles from town, so it didn't take us long to get there.  The office was closed but I walked the dogs around the parking area for a bit.  I saw a water fountain that had a provision for filling water bottles; the park service had put up a bunch of signs warning people there was no water in the park and this was their chance to fill up.  I saw a little sparrow flying up to the spigot several times, trying to get a drink, so I ran the water hoping some would collect in the bottom of the fountain.  Which it did, and when I looked back, I saw the sparrow comfortably sitting in the bowl drinking from the little puddle that had collected.  I felt like I'd done my good deed for the day.

There were also some informational signs around the office.  All signs and brochures are at least bilingual; one brochure with safety information is in 8 languages.  I've enlarged only the English parts of these signs below.

a mammoth -
caption enlarged at right

caption from left

a bomb test - caption below right

caption from above left

family playing on the sand -
caption below right

caption from above left

Just before the entrance gate, there was a sign with warnings about rattlesnakes and also saying alcohol is prohibited in the park Feb. 1 through May 31.  When I got to the gate, I asked the ranger what happens the rest of the year?  Instantly he said, "People get drunk."  A comedian.  He said the rule is to try to keep down some of the mayhem from Spring Break - there are several colleges in Alamogordo.

White Sands has the distinction of being both the coldest and the wettest desert in North America, and it's the largest gypsum dunefield in the world.  Deep layers of gypsum were left behind when the Permian Sea retreated long ago.  Unlike other kinds of dunes, gypsum holds in moisture much longer during droughts and, although the dunes are constantly shifting, the moisture they hold keep them from blowing away entirely.

Here are some signs the park service posted along the 8-mile drive through the park.

English caption enlarged below

some plants and animals here - English caption enlarged below

When I first drove in I was disappointed.

Sure I could see white sand dunes, but this didn't look like the sort of thing people would rhapsodize over.  But a little farther on, I saw this:

This area seems to have been untouched by humans.

Farther along, we pulled into a picnic area that didn't have other people yet.  I wanted to let the dogs walk in the sand - they love beaches usually.

I'm looking at this mound of sand straight on -
that's how high it is.

The car should give an idea of proportions here.

It looks so much like snow I had trouble remembering it was sand.  And the dogs didn't react as I'd expected.  This sand is colder and harder than the usual sand at the beach, and they seemed a little unsettled with it.  We climbed up a short slope and walked around a bit, but I wasn't dressed to go cliff-climbing in it, and the dogs had trouble walking in it, so we just went back after a bit.

The park service (and just about everybody else in the area) sells big disks for people to sit on and ride down the dunes - and a whole lot of people were doing just that.

White Sands is so big and so white, astronauts can see it from space.  

There's a section of the park called West Filming Area.  The rangers told me this is where film crews usually go when they make movies and commercials.  Some famous people have filmed here.  Here's a bit of information about that.   https://www.nps.gov/commercial-filming

This is an amazing place, and what with prehistoric footprints and the general geology of the place, there's a whole lot there that we didn't have time for.  The main building wasn't open when we got here, and the parking lot was packed when we left (so I figured the building was too).  I'll just have to come back another time when there's not a highly contagious virus raging.

Back to town

As we came into town, we passed a mechanics shop, where a sign said: "Pumpkin Spice Oil Changes Are Back."  What on earth do you think these are?  Unless (I hope) it's just a joke?

And back to the campground for a couple of days.

New Mexico - Day 12 - Roswell and the road to Alamogordo

White Sands/Alamogordo KOA, Alamogordo

Friday, 12 November 2021

today's route

On the road

My doctor appointment wasn't until 9:15, but Google said the drive would take just over an hour, so I left the campground at 7:00, just in case.  And in fact, it was nearly 8:30 when we got to the clinic, so I was glad we'd left early.

There was a very strong crosswind for the drive, and across this flat land there was nothing much to slow it down before it hit the RV, making driving a chore.

I saw lots of tumbleweed.  Wikipedia says tumbleweed can be any of a number of plants that all have the characteristic of drying out when they get old and the plant detaches from the root, leaving this lightweight rounded thing at the mercy of the wind.  And that's what they all look like.

I passed a historical marker that said there was a POW camp near Roswell during WWII.  From mid-1942 until a few months after Germany surrendered, this camp housed up to 4,800 German POWs.

In a pen near a farmhouse, I saw a dozen long-haired goats, including at least one billy goat.  I was amazed I could figure out what they were from the road.

I passed the Roswell International Air Center, which I hoped might get its name from the alleged UFO landings.  But as far as I can tell, the "international" refers to Mexico, not Mars.

In Roswell, I passed the David Petroleum Corporation.  I was curious and looked it up and learned it's an oil company based in Dallas with an office here in Roswell.

At the clinic

The doctor I saw was very patient but at a real disadvantage because of me just passing through town.  With vague symptoms like mine - dizziness, headache, nausea - a number of things could be wrong with me.  

He agreed it could be altitude sickness, and said he'd call in a prescription for medication I could take when I planned to go to high altitudes.  (Which means a good part of NM and AZ, for starters.)

When I told him the recent refills of my blood pressure meds were from different manufacturers than I'd had before, he agreed that could be the cause and said he'd call in new prescriptions for those.

He also pointed out that the problem could be something wrong with my ears, and I mentioned I might just need new glasses.  He said if the symptoms persisted, he recommended I get tests done on my brain, to be sure there's no swelling or other reactions that can occur from altitude sickness.

In Roswell

There's a CVS here in Roswell but not one in Alamogordo, where I intended to stay for the next few days.  When I called them about the new prescriptions, they said it'd take a couple of hours, so I took the dogs back to the convention center where we'd walked a few days ago, and then I went to the UFO museum.

Roswell has decided to go all in for the alien motif, and various versions of green alien types are all over town.  Even the Dunkin' Donuts sign was held up by a large green alien.  They're everywhere.  But you can't really blame them.  They've got the military institute, a branch of Eastern New Mexico University, and a few smallish industries.  But there are 47,000 people living here and it's not surprising they'd do what they can to attract tourists.

International UFO Museum & Research Center

I agreed to pay the $3 they charge seniors because I was, after all, in Roswell and figured I should see what they had.  I'll say up front that I'm a skeptic on UFOs and especially on extra-terrestrial landings (if they can get this far from another solar system - or galaxy - then I expect them to be much more advanced than any of the accounts I've ever seen).  But even with that caveat, I couldn't see that they had much here.

Much of the museum is founded on "The Roswell Incident" from 1947, which I knew almost nothing about.  They had ex-ten-sive displays on the actual events and all the subsequent versions and accounts and conspiracy theories.  Here's their short version of the incident:

read from right to left

2nd part of account

As you can tell, this account strongly supports the conspiracy theory version.

I suggest you read at least some of Wikipedia's version of the incident before going any further.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Roswell-incident  Clearly a skeptic wrote this page.

Much of the "evidence" referred to in the Wikipedia article is displayed at the museum - the alien autopsy, for instance.  The museum really does spend more than half its space on this incident.

And there are exhibits of other alleged UFO incidents that are also mentioned in the Wikipedia article - the Betty and Barney Hill Incident, for instance.

A nice young woman I met at the Carlsbad campground told me she and her child had visited this museum, and she said she hoped I liked to read, because about all they had was stuff to read.  She was right.  The museum hasn't got any alien artifacts to display so it has blown up accounts of the various allegations of alien encounters.  It's entertaining, in a way.

But I found one of the best exhibits to be this:

I've never seen The X-Files so don't know if the description is accurate.  But the "closed-loop logic" of conspiracy theorists this speaks of sounds pretty familiar in these days of stolen election beliefs.

For some reason I couldn't figure out, the last exhibit was this:

Do you suppose they think an ultra-popular now-classic movie series proves their point that aliens exist?

Before leaving town

We found a very nice neighborhood park where we could walk around for a bit, let the dogs stretch their legs.  This seems to be a nice town, which I didn't expect, what with all the aliens and all.

The CVS, it turned out, had a different manufacturer for one of my blood pressure meds but not the other, so I got enough of the different one to fill out the month.  I had to pay for them myself, as Medicare's position was they'd already supplied a month's worth of pills and if I didn't like them, that wasn't their problem.

But the CVS said it'd have to special order that high-altitude medicine the doctor prescribed, and I told them forget it, since I wouldn't be here to pick it up anyway.  I told them I'd have a CVS elsewhere in the state call them for the prescription.

So we'll see if it was the change in this particular medicine that triggered these strange symptoms.

Back on the road

We headed west, and southwest, aiming for Alamogordo.  I memorized how to spell this name because of it having the Alamo in it, a name I've known all my life.  What I never knew was that "alamo" is Spanish for cottonwood, so the town's name means fat cottonwood.

At first I continued to see the rolling hills of yellow grass.  Cows, horses.  A sign saying "High Activity Deer Crossing Next 3 Miles."  Gradually the road entered mountains and the Lincoln National Forest and became very scenic.  I passed small communities like Riverside, Picacho, Tinnie, Hondo.

Hondo (population just over 1,000) is home to the Hondo Iris Farm, which is apparently well-known as a tourist attraction in season.  And I saw a metal crafts shop with the sign: "Who Fires the First Shot," which I'm not sure I want to know more about.  Also in Hondo is the turn to the Lincoln State Monument, up US-380 into the Capitan Mountains.  I'd seen signs for this monument all over the region and finally looked it up.  It wasn't at all what I'd expected.

The monument is, apparently, a big chunk of the town itself and preserves some of the original buildings from the town's founding in 1849, as well as memorializes a bloody chapter of its history from the 1870s.  At that time, Lincoln County was the largest county in the US, and covered about a fourth of the NM Territory.  And there was one general store that had a monopoly on supplying provisions to all the local folks, and unsurprisingly charged monopoly prices for them.  Then a rival merchant moved in, opened another store, and nearly bankrupted the first one.  A war ensued.  And it was this war that made Billy the Kid's reputation, because he used his talents in support of the rival merchant.  It's an incredible story, and I found 2 slightly conflicting versions of it.  You can read them here   https://www.legendsofamerica.com/lincoln-county-war and here   https://allthatsinteresting.com/lincoln-county-war.

We had left Roswell at 3,573' elevation, and then came to the town of Glencoe, where a sign said they were at 6,000', so the road had clearly been climbing.

I came to the turn for the town of Ruidoso (all letters are pronounced in order - roo-ee-do-so - despite all Texans pronouncing it ree-uh-doh-sa).  But on US-70 where I was, the big attraction was Ruidoso Downs racetrack and casino.  I saw a number of other hotels and inns and spas, making it clear this area is a big draw.  And I saw more casinos as I continued the drive.  One of them was the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino, which I learned later is owned by the Mescalero Apache Tribe.

Then I saw the sign Apache Summit, 7,591', which meant I'd climbed 4,000' in the hour or so since I'd left Roswell.  Not much farther along the road, I came to the town of Mescalero, the center of the tribal lands.

The road continued to drop down after we'd reached the summit, and I saw many signs warning of elk.  I'm beginning to wonder if I'll get through all these states with all these signs warning of elk and never see an elk.  I didn't see one today.

I came to the town of Tularosa, elevation 4,520' - a drop of 3,000' from the summit.  This is where highways meet, and I joined US-54 a few miles from Alamogordo.  I passed a pecan orchard and then came to a different kind of nut: the world's largest pistachio at Pistachioland.

It's 30' tall, took 5 yards of concrete and 35 gallons of paint.  It was easily visible from the road but I didn't stop.  That photo is from the internet.  I was too tired, though I was tempted by the nearby McGinn's Pistachio Tree Ranch and Arena Blanca Winery Tasting Room and Gift Shop.

Fortunately we weren't far from the campground and arrived at 3:00.  Even though only a few hours of the day had been spent driving, I was still tired enough to be glad to stop.  And the dogs were ready for a walk.

New Mexico - Days 9 - 11 - in the campground

Carlsbad KOA, Carlsbad

Tuesday, 9 through Thursday, 11 November 2021

It seemed a little nuts to come all this way south and not visit Carlsbad Caverns, which I actually wanted to see, having heard about it all my life.  But I was still feeling somewhat dizzy for enough of the time here to make me worried.  I decided that staying still and not changing altitudes again by going underground might be more therapeutic.

The whole point of coming down here now, instead of going farther north, was to get to an elevation below 5,000', which the internet recommended for altitude sickness.  I have little faith in medical advice from the internet, but this seemed intuitive and safe and easy to follow (not like injecting disinfectant, for instance).  But because I wasn't getting significant relief from the symptoms, I finally decided to see a doctor, and found a clinic in Roswell that could take me on Friday as a walk-in with an appointment.

And because I wasn't magically well again, I decided there was no point staying here past the time of my doctor appointment.  So I made reservations for upcoming travel and plotted driving routes, all of which takes time.

I had heard that last week a bunch of people gathered at Dealey Plaza in Dallas to witness the return of JFK Jr. who, they believe, faked his own death in 1999 (they don't explain why he would do this or what happened to his wife and sister-in-law), has been in hiding ever since - possibly working as an accountant somewhere (again, why), and that he'd reappear in public on November 2nd here where his father was killed, and reinstate Trump as rightful president (they don't explain how this would happen) and would become Trump's vice president.  It's that last one that really stuns me.  If JFK Jr. has this much fanatical support, why wouldn't he declare himself as president (if he has the power to declare presidents) and why would he - a lifelong Democrat and son of a Democrat and member of a staunchly Democratic family - join forces with a Republican?  Especially playing 2nd fiddle?  But a whole bunch of folks believed it.  

I found an article that talks about the man who came up with this crazy notion.   https://www.vice.com/qanon-dallas-jfk-michael-protzman-negative48  The article explains that JFK Jr. is a descendant of the marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene (my copy of the Bible somehow missed this), and that I, as someone with blood type O, am related to Jesus and am therefore being hunted by the New World Order.  Funny, but none of these folks mentions JFK Jr.'s sister Caroline, who is still alive and well.  Isn't she too a descendant of this Jesus/Mary union?  And she didn't fake her own death, so there wouldn't be any awkward explanations.  Maybe they asked her and she refused to take part in this lunacy.  Or maybe they're just sexist.

Because I'm writing this post so much later than it happened, I feel compelled to give an update, which is that a lot of those Qanon folks stayed over and reassembled at Dealey Plaza on Monday, the 22nd, the anniversary of JFK's assassination.  They expected to see both JFK Jr. and his 104-year-old dad appear there.  I found this article, somewhat obscured by all the ads, that explains why these folks gathered and describes the cult-like atmosphere.   https://www.alternet.org/bizarre-qanon-group-shows-how-conspiracism-breeds-cults

But I also found another writer who pointed out that, despite how nutty some of these ideas seem, these folks are still allowed to vote, despite being obviously out of touch with reality.  This writer, Jason Easley, pointed out that bipartisan consensus is unlikely when one party includes a cult that believes in a Trump/JFK Jr. ticket.  He said, "America isn't just two different countries.  It is becoming two different planets."

And these folks are still allowed to vote.