Blogs from Alamogordo, New Mexico, United States, North America

Suffering yet again from an abundance of time and sufficient gas money Karen and I decided to embark on a one month road trip. Head westward my liver spotted friends! We made our first stop in Pensacola Florida where we enjoyed the asceptic confines of a downtown hotel in the old section of the city. Our room was one of only five rented in the 100 room facility. Pensacola is a Navy aviator town. There are buff young men in abundance and wreaths of hopeful young women clustered around them. Think of 'Officer and a Gentleman' without the cardboard box factory. We ate at Jackson's Steakhouse where my friend Marc and I dined nearly a decade ago. Same great food and service without the pretentious bill. Ask for Antonio to be your waiter. The only genuinely ... read more

White Snow, White Sands and Missiles - Amazing Day Our Sacramento Mountain river camp site in Ruidoso stood at an altitude of 6000 feet. Overnight we had rain and sleet but all was sunny by Wednesday morning and off we went. To get over the mountains we had to go through the pass at an altitude of 8000 feet, and there was snow, lots of snow. It was a beautiful drive up through the pass and working our way down towards Alamogordo. Coming down off the mountain you could see the White Sands. From 40 miles away it looked like more snow; a long unbroken white stripe in the desert plateau between the Sacramento and San Andres Mountains. In Alamogordo we made a quick stop at the Museum of Space History. Turning into the road to ... read more

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. ************************** 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 ... read more

New Mexico White Sands, Ruidoso and Tularosa Basin I headed to visit old friends and Chris on his assignment in New Mexico Dec 21-23, 2008. We went straight to the White Sands National Park in the Tularosa Basin. We spent time dune surfing, sliding and making sand angels in the gypsum powder deposited from the west winds of the San Andres Mountians. This 245 mile area doesn't drain as it has no water source. This was the area that the first atomic bomb detination site - Trinity in 1945. God blessed us with the same color palette of Joesph's technicolor dream coat. The next day we headed to Three Rivers Petroglyphs. This area has 21,000 etchings in all shapes and sizes from the Jornada Mogollon tribes from 1000-1400AD. This hike was breath taking with the ... read more