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WOW! Alomogordo, New MexicoMay 15, 2007
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On the way to Almogordo: 2 big old "dinos" - drilling up...
flat - - just so....Flat
On the way to Alomogordo, NM
Alomogordo, New Mexico. Home of the White Sands National Monument. There is a lot to this entry, so hold on......
Our RV 'home' was Edginton RV in Alomogordo. The RV park was special in itself, run by a young retiree and his wife. There were permanents, semi-permanents and then regular traveling-thru-ers like our two rigs. There was a windmill, a nature pond, the RV park was a Wildlife Reserve, almond trees - just really neat and different.
The Most Important and Exciting thing we did while we stayed there was go to the White Sands National Monument. This is a giant sea of white gypsum. The gypsum powder was deposited by west winds from the eroded San Andres Mountains, washed down by rainwater and deposited in Lake Lucerno, thus creating the White Sands Dunes. The white sands dune field is an "active dune field". The dunes move from west to east as much as thirty feet per year. There is no fresh water in the white sands dune field so the animals that live in the dunes get their water from the food they eat.
The sands cover nearly 300 square miles. During the heat of the day, the wildlife are underground in burrows. However, there were plenty of plants for us to see. We were told some of the plants can survive burial by a moving white sand dune by the plant growing quickly upward to keep their leaves above the rising sand.
OK, enough history and on to FUN!!!!!!
David bought a snow disc. Yes, a Snow Disc.
We drove out to the sand dunes (mini-mountains). We c l i m b e d the sand dunes, and slid on the disc (which was waxed on the bottom) down the sand dunes. The climbing up was not a barrel of monkeys, but the slide down was a HOOT! Loved it! Old people acting like kids - can't beat THAT for fun!
Then, the next day we rode up (9000 feet above 'stess' level), to Cloudcroft. Tiny little town, mostly set up for various seasons for tourists. We had lunch at a cafe inside a wooden 'mini-mall'. The restaurant seated about 15. The cook also took our order. Good food though- Ron and David took a nap in the Jeep while Connie and I shopped. Lots of shops closed until end of May. Guess that is the "season". There was a pet store that had a 'fitting table' for the dogs (or cats). So cute - Sadie got a pink fuzzy sweater like Bonnie's.
One additional piece of history: West of Alamogordo, an area of desert and mountains, 100 miles by 40 miles is closed to public access and used by the military for various kinds of weapons testing; this includes the Trinity Site where the first atomic bomb was detonated in July 1945.
