Day 10-11: Dallas,TX to Alamogordo,NM to Sedona,AZ

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Note: Havent been able to update the blog over the past few days.. Hotels without Internet, more hours of driving as we dropped off people along the way, and weeks of travel through changing weather, different altitudes and shifting time zones caught up with us eventually. Unfortunately, that means that I dont remember all the fun, whacky moments from the trip that made it such an enjoyable holiday 😞 Its those stories, those anecdotes that defined our trip, but nevertheless, heres an overview of what we did end up doing.

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We were initally planning to make 3 stops along the way before hitting Vegas on 30th - Roswell (famous for alien UFO landings in 1947) and Albuquerque in New Mexico, and then Flagstaff near the Grand Canyon in Arizona. But Sapna was interested in doing a longer trek in the Grand Canyon, and all of us liked that idea as well. So we decided to cut short our stay in New Mexico to make more time for Grand Canyon.


New plan:
- Reach Alamogordo in New Mexico by tonight (27th) so that we can see a bit of the place during daylight tomorrow
- Reach Flagstaff by tomorrow night (28th) and explore Grand Canyon the day after (29th)


The drive from Dallas to Alamogordo was one, long 14-hour journey. We had lost a driver in Dhiraj, but now we had Gattu to take his place. So we were okay on the driving front. It was passing time in the car that was a challenge. Especially since this drive was largely during the day rather than at night when everyone tends to fall asleep in the car. Sometimes even the driver joins them.


Our in-house games expert Sapna soon took over. Antakshari, followed by several new games that we created along the way kept us occupied for a bit.. It was also the first full day with just the 5 of us together, so it was a nice occasion to remember undergrad days and friends from Singapore.. Nothing like lots of scandalous stories and gossip to help you get through a long drive.


Passed several sleepy towns along the way. Amazing how quickly things close down outside the big cities. Decided to stop by a town called Artesia for dinner around 9pm, only to realize that all restaurants were already closed for the day. Blackberry and googlemaps to the rescue again. Managed to find the only place in town still open for business. Also managed to find perhaps the worst Mexican food on the trip.



Finally reached Alamogordo around midnight.. By now we had perfected our process for finding a place to sleep for the night on this trip - By 10-11pm, we would start checking our mapbook to pick a town to stay over for the night, googlemaps and our blackberries would then help us find a list of budget hotels even as we are on the move, Sanak and AKshay would start working the phones as we enter the town, and I would go in for the final negotiation to seal a good deal for the night.. Tonight, it would be the Days Inn at Alamogordo.. Guy behind the counter looked Indian, but I was too tired to strike a conversation with him..



Next day...
Time to check out from the hotel. Turns out that the guy is not only Indian, he is gujju.. So now I do strike up a longer conversation with him about where he is from, whats he doing over there etc.. Mr. Patel, who ran the motel, liked us enough to give us some plastic sleds for having fun at the sand dunes where we were headed...


Our first sightseeing stop in New Mexico was the White Sands National Monument near Alamogordo.. Had a small hiccup reaching the place.. Missed a turn and ended up going a few meters down the road before turning back.. As luck would have it, we now had to pass through a customs checkpoint on the way back.. I was traveling without my passport since our road trip was only supposed to be a domestic trip within the US.. It didnt help us that Alamogordo is quite close to the Mexican border and a bunch of tired, unshaven students can look remarkably similar to Mexicans trying to sneak in illegally across the border.. But between five Indians who probably looked the same to the customs officer, and a bunch of passports, IDs, driving licenses that we dumped on the officer, we managed to confuse him enough to convince him that he had indeed checked my passport and everything was alright.. Phew, that was close! The road trip could have ended right there if things had turned out differently.



10am: White sands, here we come! Located in southcentral New Mexico, west of Alamagordo, are the world's largest dune fields of gypsum sand.. Buried behind a $3-per-person toll booth is an awesome sight. Expansive white dunes roll on for miles.. The brilliant white sand dunes cover an area of more than 200 square miles, with many dunes rising to over 50 feet.. The beautiful San Andres mountains in the distance and the winter light shining brightly on the shimmering sands give the whole place a sense of peace and tranquility.. Which we promptly broke by getting on our sleds rolling down the sand dunes.. Its at times like these when none of us remembers our age (and I love that! keep it up, guys)... There we were, right next to 8-year olds, squealing, running, sliding and sledding down the dunes. So much fun, so tiring.



2pm: Returned the sleds to Patel bhai, looked around for some food and found a Mexican place that looked like it might have some decent stuff.. Turned out to the best Mexican meal on the trip (more than made up for the food we had the previous night).

Our next sightseeing stop was the VLA (Very Large Array), located between the towns of Magdalena and Datil, about fifty miles west of Socorro in New Mexico. The Very Large Array is a radio astronomy observatory, part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). It consists of 27, 82' antennas, each weighing over 200 tons and arranged in a Y shape along rails, all movable by locomotive.. The place was an hour out of the way, but I was quite looking forward to seeing these huge satellite dishes after having seen them in several sci-fi movies.. We made there just a little after sunset, so we did get to see the dishes.. But unfortunately the light was not good enough to get good pics.. Am sure the whole place would have looked absolutely awesome in daylight.



Continued the drive into Arizona and decided to stay at Sedona instead of Flagstaff. Sedona is in the opposite direction to where we want to go, but the drive from Sedona to Flagstaff is supposed to very scenic, and we will check that out tomorrow.. For tonight, its going to be the Super 8 Motel in Sedona. We are finally in red-rock country - Arizona!

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