Advertisement
Alien street
Hope the real ones don't show up. Roswell.
Managed not to be beamed anywhere, and the only thing that got probed was my bank ballance for the hotel and gas....
Wounder it there was ever a guy called Jim who got beamed up by aliens....JimBeam. hmmm must have a drink over that one.
Had a quick look at Roswell, fairly normal town, the usual tourist shops of Alien stuff, and alien museam, most of the street lights in the centre of town are alien heads.
Headed out of town towards the west on highway 70, it started out a yet another flat straight peice of road through arid lands, but it didn't take long before it was making its way into some nice valleys and then climbing into some mountains and over a couple of scenic passes.
This section of the road is labled a "safety corridor" and has much reduced speed limits.
Couldn't figgure out why, it was a 4 lane highway with only sweeping bends.
As far as I colud tell a very safe stretch of highway, particuarly compared to many of the roads at home.
Maybe the New Mexico authorities have very little faith in the local drivers abilities, or this was a decision by
Bearing it all
Couldn't bear not to take this one.
Spot the imposters. somebody who had an overly sheltered childhood.
Eitherway everybody I saw was coping very well.
There is a couple of nice towns in these hills, I stopped brifly at one called Ruidoso where I found the local bear population hanging out.
In the form of carved (from Logs) bears, and some of their forest friends, and an imposter or 2.
As there are no big hills or grades on this road you manage to get deceptively high without noticing it, one of the passes was 6000ft high (about 1800meters).
I took things leisurely today managing to get passed by most things, good for sight seeing.
As I came down out of the hills things took a definate change, it got noticably hotter, and the towns took on that dusty rundown "out west" feel about them.
In this area you aren't too far from the Mexican boarder, and a lot of spanish/mexican architecture was about, there was a couple of shops on the side of the road selling bunches of dried chillies, and the usual trinkets to lure the tourists.
Which reminds me that I must point out that I am not one (a tourist that is) i am merely an
interested traveler, tourists are annoying people who buy lots of trinkets and keep getting in your way and sticking their camera's in you face.
I merely buy fridge magnets, and am very carefull where I stick my camera.
Anyway after hooking a right at Alamogordo and thankfully passing the sign advising that if the lights next to it were flashing (they weren't) the road could be closed for an hour while missiles were tested at the Whitesands missile range which the road goes right through.
And smack in the middle of all of this is the Whitesands national monument which was my target for the afternoon.
If there was ever an aptly named place this is it, as I had driven out of the mountains earlier I could see it spreading out for miles over the desert ahead of me and it only gets better when you get there.
Again with extreme forethought I turned up in the early afternoon on 38ish degree C heat to avoid the tourists who, of course melt in this heat.
There is a road which takes you right into the sand dunes, which are made up of white silica sand.
There are all these
Whitesands
Large thunderstorm looms over the desert. small picnic shelters set up in the dunes so that you can park your car right next to them, they look so surreal in the desert.
So getting out there, there was nothing else for it but to grab the camera and start running up dunes to get better views, if I wasn't sweating beforehand I was by the end of it.
And some nice ladies offered to take my photo, so I now have a couple of those too.
There is also an area where you can camp amongst the dunes if you are so inclined, as my $30 tent lacks AC I wasn't feeling inclined.
After leaving the Park I carried on west, I couldn't resist but to look up a side road or 2, never know what you might find.........
The trinity site where the first ever atomic bomb was set off is just north of where the park is.
The rest of the day was made up of driving in the general direction of the next destination, northern Arizona.
I finished up the day in a small town called Sorocco dodging more thunderstorms on the way.
BUT not managing to dodge the baorder control who I
My best pose
And finally something whiter than my legs got pulled over by, actually they were pulling over everybody on the I25 northbound (away from Mexico) I got asked if I was an american citizen (I am, dual national Kiwi, US) and in my best Kiwi accent answered yes, whithout a blink he sent me on my way........maybe I'll try a different accent next time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.157s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 55; dbt: 0.05s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb