2009 NM Day 4 and beyond

Wednesday morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed off to the Roswell Alien Research Center and Museum. It was a fairly cheesy museum, but interesting nonetheless. My opinion after reading all the various things is that the government was testing some secret device and covered it up rather clumsily by sticking to the “weather balloon” story. If they had just said it was an experimental device, no one would have been much interested. It was interesting to see that most of the interviews that were taken were written down many years after the original events. I wonder if people’s memories were colored by subsequent press coverage and UFO investigators questions.

Proof! Well, actually a movie prop.



Aliens abound at night------------------and are fully revealed by day


We met a very interesting group of girls from Montreal, on a university field trip. They were all in a Master’s of Marketing or Anthropology program and their trip was to determine how stories and myths were created and to interview people to see what they believed about those stories. Roswell was their assignment. I would be interested to read their papers.

Poor little Roswell isn’t much of a town and really depends on the alien influence to bring people in.


We sell it all!

After museum touring we had a coffee from this little coffee shop – owned by the pastor of a local church. It was very charming inside – decorated like a French country garden. It was a wi-fi café so there were lots of people working on their computers and drinking coffee.



Once we left Roswell, we headed to Taos, which was a drive through a lot of nothing for the first few hours.

Nothing


More nothing

Still more nothing


Finally! A little bit of something on the horizon!

We got into Taos about 5 and settled into our great little Comfort Suites Hotel. I wasn’t feeling too great – we didn’t know it then, but we had picked up an alien bug in Roswell and it was to make our lives very interesting for the next week or so.

I had the shakes, aches and shivers that night – not much sleep. Keith went skiing on Thursday and when he called me to see how I was, told me to call our Pulmonologist and get a prescription for an antibiotic. By that time I was coughing up the icky stuff. I did call, and he picked up the Rx on his way home. Thursday night he got the crud and neither of us slept. He called in for a prescription for himself on Friday and stayed home from skiing that day. We finally rallied enough to go out and get some takeout lunch from a good restaurant (I had been living on instant oatmeal and leftover Subway sandwiches up until this point and was ready for something tasty.)

We ordered a Cobb salad and chicken noodle soup and they were both with an interesting Taos twist. The salad had a whole head of roasted garlic added to the mix – which we abstained from, a half an avocado and garlic roasted chicken. The soup had fresh tiny green beans, garbanzo beans, spinach, tomatoes, red peppers, as well as the normal chicken noodle soup components. We both slept better that night and he went skiing on Saturday (taking it pretty easy though – if there is any way you can take it easy while skiing!)

I forayed out for the first time on Saturday and visited the local animal shelter. It was interesting to see what things they did differently and I got to hold a very nice kitty. I went to visit my favorite little shopping area and as I was getting out of the car, I heard drums. I wondered if there was a parade nearby and followed the sound to the plaza next door. There I found an Aztec celebration. It was the Danza Azteca de Anahuac celebrating in honor of Cuauhtémoc, last defender of the Aztec nation. There were about 30 people dancing, in the most fantastic Aztec costumes. They didn’t allow photographs taken, as it was a religious ceremony, so I just enjoyed it for about an hour. The drum music was sonderful, it reminded me of the Brazilian drummers on the Paul Simon album, Rythym of the Saints. The costumes were very interesting. Some people had fantastic headdresses – here are a couple of pictures I pulled friom the web:

Some of the women wore very simple long dresses slit up the sides, with or without pants undeneath. Everyone wore ankle rattles made from seed pods called ayoyotes. It was really fascinating to listen and watch.
After Keith and his cousin Roger got home from skiing, we went to dinner at the restaurant in the hotel next door. It had a great roaring fire in the fireplace that felt so good to sit near. The firescreen had a metal roadrunner on it (the roadrunner is the state bird of New Mexico.)

After dinner we started packing all the gear in preparation for leaving the next day.

Sunday we packed up and headed down to Albuquerque. The drive through the Rio Grande gorge is one of our favorites, very scenic. The river was running fairly high due to a lot of snow melt.

We stayed in Albuquerque that night and flew out the next morning.

All in all, a great trip – just could have done without the alien invasion!

2009 NM Day 3

We set out on Tuesday morning for Carlsbad Caverns. The drive from the town of Carlsbad to the caverns was across a flat and pretty boring countryside. Lots of cactus though. Prickly Pear, a red variety I hadn’t seen before along with the green. Lots of that tall spiky skinny cactus – can’t think of the name for it. Finally we drove up into a small mountain range and at the top was the Carlsbad Caverns visitors center. We decided to do as much as we could, so we took the Natural Entrance Tour. It is self guided, so you can stop and look around as much as you want and rest as often as you want. These are both very important factors since you descend 750 feet down a mile long trail with the grade at 20% for much of the way.

We had gotten shoes for people who run on rock before our trip to Colorado last summer. I had a very bad experience where my regular Florida walking shoe had not kept a grip on a rock at the stream in Missouri, resulting in a nasty fall and a twisted ankle. We didn’t want a repeat of that, so we got these special shoes and they are the greatest. I think you could walk down a glass wall in them. They grip like a gecko’s foot, I swear. In addition, they have a really roomy toe box and cinch up really tight around the instep, keeping my toes from sliding forward and banging the end of the shoe. This is a necessity when you are going down such steep slopes for 3 hours. Yes, it took us 3 hours to descend – they say it takes an hour, but we like to really savor and see everything.

Here is the Natural Entrance – looking down – you can see how steep the trail is.




This is looking at the Natural Entrance from the amphitheater.The Natural Entrance to the cave was quite a sight. It is a big hole in the side of a rock rise, going dooooown. There is an amphitheatre at the top where at sunset you can watch millions of tiny bats swarm out to eat. But, right now the bats are in Mexico, lolling around, getting suntans and won’t be back to NM until mid March. So, we didn’t see bats – smelled lots of guano, however. Well, to be fair, we only smelled guano in the upper cave where the bats flew in and out. What they call Bat Cave is a cave much further back than the walking trail and that is where the bats actually reside. From the entrance, a very steep paved walkway descends with switchbacks. The path is quite nice and there are hand railings in most areas. It is quite an experience to descend a few levels and turn back and see the entrance as a circle of blue sky getting smaller each time we stopped and looked. The cave is extremely well lit and quite huge, so I never felt claustrophobic.

Looking back at the entrance as we descended – with the hole getting smaller and smaller.



Before they let you enter the cave, the rangers tell you how hard it will be and make sure you know what you are letting yourself in for. There are numerous signs around warning that sore knees and exhaustion may occur. I didn’t care, I was going to walk all the way down if I had to do it on my hands and knees (so to speak!) This was a once in a lifetime experience and I wasn’t about to miss it. For people who could not handle the descent, there is an elevator which takes you directly to the Big Room. Parts of The Big Room tour are even accessible by wheelchair, and I am very thankful I didn’t need to see it that way.

The trail went a long way back into the cave, descending all the way, with zillions of switchbacks, until we were at the opposite end from where we had come in. We could still see the daylight from the entrance. After another good hike, we entered the twilight zone, which is where the last of the natural light was. We stopped and took one look back at the tiny blue spot where we had entered and then pressed on into the subterranean world. From the VLA where they monitor the farthest reaches of the universe, to the depths of the underground cave world in less than 24 hours. What an incredible combination of things to do.

There weren’t very many people in this part of the cave, we probably encountered no more than 20 people the entire way. One thing I had never considered, a trail like this would be very difficult if you were afraid of heights. Each switchback would drop us a good way down and after every couple of those we would stop and look up at where we had just been with absolute amazement. Awe and amazement were the overpowering feelings. The place is so huge that it is hard to comprehend. We saw many beautiful formations on the way down, but the overpowering sense was how deep inside the earth we were going. We would often stop and look down to see where we were going – imagine looking down 20 stories and seeing the path you are going to follow to get there.

We took these pictures in one of the few narrow parts of the cavern. Keith said that the cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island at Disney would be totally disappointing after this.





This part of the cave is still very active, which means that you hear a constant trickle of water making new formations. The path is often wet, always steep and I came to love those trusty hand rails! They had really done a nice job of building the trails. There were frequent benches and resting spots with scenic overlooks and also frequent phones that you could pick up and call if you needed a ranger (which was comforting – what if you did fall, and survived? You would need help.) The lighting was very subtle and spotlighted the formations as well as kept the trial visible.

About ¾ of the way down we encountered a ranger on his way up. His job is to walk the trail and he says he makes 2 or 3 trips a day!!! Now 750 down is hard, don’t let me minimize the effort it takes on the calves and thighs to keep you in a slow descent, but 750 uphill? I can barely imagine it. Needless to say, he was young and very fit! No need for him to join a gym in that job. As we chatted for a few minutes, a solitary older woman on her way down asked him plaintively how far she had left. Poor thing was obviously regretting her choice! She won’t once some time has passed.

Any sound in the cave carries for a quarter of a mile they say, so you are asked to speak in hushed tones of voice. It was very humid in the cave, which we loved and stays a constant 56 degrees year around. I brought my jacket, but never put it on, staying warm by walking.

At the very end of the trail we had to climb several stories, which was not what our tired legs wanted to do! Once in the large underground area they call the Lunch Room, we could take a bit of a rest. This is where the elevator brings you from the surface and how you return. There are restrooms there and it is quite odd to follow a cave tunnel to a rest room! They don’t allow any food or drink except water to be brought in, but they do have a small concession area in the Lunch room. Everything purchased there must be consumed there so as not to attract outside animals in or otherwise contaminate the caverns.

The next tour was the Big Room tour which, mercifully, was mostly on level ground. This tour was also about a mile in length and also took us 3 hours! They say that the Carlsbad has the second largest cavern in the word known at this time and is the most beautifully decorated. It is very interesting, we looked at the pictures afterwards and it looks lots more scary than it felt while we were doing it. We saw amazing formation after amazing formation – practically every cave formation I had ever heard of and lots I hadn’t. Some of them were faintly creepy. This one reminded me of the monster Cthulhu from H.P Lovecraft’s horror stories. (In fact, Davy Jones from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End was a direct steal from Cthulhu.)



Depiction of Cthulhu Cave formation. After we completed the Big Room tour, we took the elevator back to the surface and that was the only time I felt claustrophobic. The elevator indicator numbers was in feet – 1 foot when it was at the surface and 753 feet when it opened its’ doors at our level. I was very interested to research the elevator and find that the original one had been installed in 1931 and became operational in 1932.

Our only regret about taking so much time in the cavern was that we only had 10 minutes in the gift shop before it closed, and our feet were so tired we didn’t look at all the ground level exhibits but had a snack in the little café instead.

We left Carlsbad (a charming little town, by the way) and headed back to Roswell. I called the Roswell Best Western and got Irene again and she booked a room for us that night. Our drive back to Roswell was a fine one and you better believe we were ready for bed that night! We woke up the next morning with sore legs!

2009 NM Days 1 and 2

It's been a while, been concentrating on posts on other sites regarding my volunteer work with the Humane Society. Here is what I have been up to lately.

Monday and Tuesday, 2/15-2/16
We landed in Albuquerque after two uneventful flights, about 7:30 pm. We checked into our hotel and went to bed early. Tuesday morning we headed out to see the Very Large Array, a group of giant radio telescopes in the middle of nowhere. They are located at about 7000 feet altitude, in a valley surrounded by mountains. This shields them from radio interference from any towns. Not that they are near anything anyway. Socorro is a tiny town about an hour south of A and the VLA is about and hour west of that. When Keith first saw them, as we drove over the hill, he wasn’t too impressed. But as we kept driving and driving and they kept getting bigger and bigger, he became very impressed! The air is so clear here that it is hard to judge distance. Keith is at the base of one dish in both pictures below.



We walked all around and had a great time there. One funny thing, the door to the display area had a sign on it that said, “This door will be locked on windy days. Please use the rear door.” Since the wind was blowing about 40 mph, we wondered just what they would consider a windy day!

They are over 80 feet in diameter, our whole house would fit in half of one. By lining up these telescopes, they have the listening power of a telescope much larger – miles across - too large to be built there. They also had an interesting display of the power of the dishes. They had two dishes about 9 feet in diameter placed about 60 feet apart. When we spoke to each other in the most hushed voices, it sounded like we were standing right next to each other. Once we were outside the concentrating area of the dish, we had to yell to hear each other. Amazing!

On our walk around the premises we saw a pack of jackrabbits! They bolted when we got too near them, but Keith got a good picture of one.







After our walking tour, we drove over to the dish maintenance building and one dish was in for rehab. The High Plains Lifter is like a dolly for the dishes. It lifts them off their pedestals and then trundles them via rail to their next position. Each railroad crossing was marked with a RailRoad Crossing Exempt sign which I found out means that school busses and commercial vehicles aren’t required to stop before crossing the track. I guess they don’t figure the lifter hauling a dish will run down someone.




We finished up and were on the way out when we saw a huge buck with a very large rack just crossing the road. We were sure glad he hadn’t been there a minute earlier.

The drive to Roswell was across a small mountain range and as we crossed, we stopped and looked at the stars/ Man oh man – like nothing you see in the east! The combination of altitude, no humidity and being a hundred miles from anything sure gave us a great view of the stars and the Milky Way. Venus was so bright it was amazing. If it hadn’t been cold and windy we would have stayed longer. We decided to drive on to Carlsbad that night so we could be there first thing in the morning. As we went through Roswell on our way to Carlsbad, I called and made a hotel reservation for the Best Western. I asked her for directions, telling her we would be coming from Roswell on 285. She said to go North on 285 and the hotel would be on the left hand side. I said we were coming from the north (since Roswell is north of Carlsbad, duh!) and then she said they would be on the right hand side. I figured she was a dope and I would call back once we got into town.

On the drive down, we saw a huge lighted structure that turned out to be an oil refinery. It looked like a cross between a fairy land and an inferno. All the buildings were lit up on the outside and there were 6 separate pipes that spewed various types of flame and smoke. 4 of them were putting out long streamers of yellow flame and the wind was so strong that the flame was horizontal to the ground. One tall pipe had a smoke streamer and one had a small blue flame at the top. We saw a few oil rigs, but not as many as I would have thought. There was a distinct odor of sulphur in the air. The name of the town was Artesia, and apparently there was a big artesian well there, but as it was night, we drove on.

Each little house along the way was sitting in a pool of lamplight. It looks like they don’t have street lights per se out in the country, but each house has its own street light.

We arrived in Carlsbad about 9 pm after having left Albuquerque at 10 that morning. It was a long day and we were pooped. We stopped at a Walgreen’s to buy the essentials, a humidifier to keep our amphibious mucous membranes from drying out overnight as well as many gallons of waters for same. I called the hotel again for directions and got Irene, the same lady, and she gave me the same directions as before – obviously not the brightest bulb in the bunch, so we decided to ask the locals at the Walgreens. The hotel was on Main Street and that is what 285 was called when it got into town she said. We asked the guys how to get there and they looked puzzled. They said,

“Well, we do have a street called Main Street, but it isn’t 285. 285 is called Canal Street once it gets into town and that is where our Best Western is, on Canal Street.”

All of a sudden I got a funny feeling that perhaps I had screwed up. I told Keith, let’s go out to the car and check. Sure enough, I had booked the Best Western in Roswell, as we were driving through Roswell to Carlsbad – over an hour away. Who’s the dope now?

We called Irene back and (mentally) apologized for calling her an idiot (since we didn’t actually verbalize it) and told her what idiotic thing I had done and she cancelled the reservation with no charge. Whew! Then we called the correct Best Western, on Canal Street and booked a room for two very tired and very humble travelers.