New Mexico Adventure

I wrote all these entries up after the fact, as I wanted to focus my time on enjoying the vacation, and just reordered the dates so that they appear sequentially while visiting the blog. Anyway, all six New Mexico entries are now uploaded.



Lately, I've been trying to make my trips involve seeing friends while visiting a new place. I continued this trend with my trip to New Mexico. Some friends had moved out to New Mexico a while back, and I had never been there. For a small trip for Spring Break, it seemed like the perfect destination. The plan was to take a road trip and then tour a little bit of the area around Santa Fe.


My companion for this trip was Karen, a friend from college. Her and I had traveled through Italy in 2008. She moved to New Mexico several years ago to pursue a masters in Art Therapy. I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, and had been meaning to visit for a while.

I landed in Albuquerque late on Thursday night. Rather than rushing up to Santa Fe and bothering Karen and and her husband, Bill (another friend from our scholarship group) at midnight, I spent the night in Albuquerque. While waiting for Karen to get off work the next day, I toured Albuquerque a little bit.

Many of the towns in New Mexico were founded by the Spanish a long time ago. A legacy of this remains in the presence of a central plaza. So, it felt like a natural first stop in the city.

First I checked out the old town, with its plaza.

Now, Old Town is nice enough, but it definitely felt touristy. The streets of Old Town are lined with various restaurants and shops. I wandered through the church yard (but did not enter), picked up another rosary in the attached gift shop, then took a stroll through the streets.


Given that I come from a long line of potters, I couldn't resist ducking into a pottery outlet shop. I picked up a couple of pieces that were similar to these ones.

Honestly, I was done with Old Town relatively quickly. I wasn't really souvenir hunting this trip, and (like is usually the case) most of the pieces I actually liked were far too expensive.

Next I drove west of town, to the Petroglyph National Monument. Between 400-700 years ago, the native population carved designs onto the volcanic rocks of the region. These designs are all over the place in the park, found on a large number of rocks seemingly at random.


There were several small hiking areas in the park, each with a couple of trails. I only visited Boca Negra canyon.

I had read at some points that the early spanish settlers also drew some petroglyphs, though I had no way to tell which was which. Also, lacking a manual, much of the symbolism was lost on me. I could really only enjoy the petroglyphs on a surface level.


Petroglyph national park was pretty close to residential areas.

I liked this design - the spiral bisected by a straight crack in the rock.

A collection of petroglyphs.

Albuquerque, from the hill in Boca Negra canyon.

I have reached the End, apparently.

After completing my hike, I had lunch, picked up some supplies for camping and hiking, and then headed North to meet up with Karen. That night, we had dinner with Jaymin (another person I went to undergrad with now living in Santa Fe) and one of Karen’s local friends, Paul at a restaurant just around the block from Karen's place.

My food bravery plummets without Zane to goad me and a lack of "safe" options. This trip was not a culinary adventure. At dinner that night, I had Tacos (boring, I know). To my credit (if you're feeling generous), I did sample some some of the green chile that is so prevalent in this region. First I tried it straight. I must say, it’s much more palatable when placed in something else, like tacos. Still, it wasn't unpleasant and actually tasted good (if a tiny bit hot for my pathetic spice tolerance).

Following this, we turned in. We had a long day ahead of us; Karen had planned an 11-hours-of-driving road trip to begin at 8am the next day.

VLA and Elephant Butte (Day 2)

The itinerary planned by Karen. Eleven and a half hours of driving in two days. The plan was thus: head down to the Very Large Array. Tours of the VLA are given on the first Saturday of the month. The first one started at 11am. Take some photos there, including the Shot. Then, continue driving further south until we reach Elephant Butte. Set up camp and spend the night there. The next morning, swing through Las Cruces, then turn east and check out White Sands. We’d spend a few hours there before progressing north to the Valley of Fires and home. Not so many destinations, but it was a pretty long haul that would cover the southern portion of the state.

As an addendum, thanks to Karen for planning out this weekend. We had tossed some ideas back and forth, but much of the planning was due to her efforts. I tend to be a bit less structured when I sightsee. Consequently, things tend to go a lot less smoothly.

To the Very Large Array!

Karen and I are huge nerds, and both of us love the film “Contact” (with Jodie Foster). In college, we used to joke that Karen looked like Jodie and we'd always wanted to recreate several of the iconic scenes from the movie. So, part of our reason for visiting the VLA was to have a photo shoot of sorts. In addition to this, the VLA is cool for its own sake. It’s a lab that has an array of massive radio telescopes and is open to the public. How much more awesome can you get?

The interior of the lab is stuck in a time-stasis; I believe we had temporarily passed into the 70s or early 80s.


This is the area behind a bank of computers receiving the signals from the telescopes.

I'm jealous of any man who gets to have nine monitors on his desk.

TELESCOPES!

Each telescope is located on one of three straight rail lines that meet at a central point. The telescopes can be moved anywhere on a rail line. Every four months, the telescopes are reconfigured; they are moved closer to each other and the center of the array (which gets a broader picture of the sky) or moved further apart from one another (which allows a more narrow picture of a portion of the sky). From a photography point of view, we were lucky. We visited when the telescopes were in their most compact configuration; all were pulled in to the center of the array. When the telescopes are in their most spread out configuration, I think each telescope is at least a couple miles from another. You'd only be able to get a few from each rail line in a single shot, unless you were really far away.

This gives a sense of scale of the telescopes. These things are huge.

Another shot of the array.

The telescope closest to the visitor center.


Shot of it from another angle.

Karen doing a pose from Contact.

Karen doing the second pose from Contact.


Me and a telescope.

Outtakes


Turns out aliens have a sense of humor.

Oh, a final note for the VLA. They do not, repeat, NOT, participate in SETI. The tour guides made sure to emphasize this, largely because they probably get that question a lot on every tour. It was literally the first question I heard when the tour started. "Where do you keep the aliens?" For my part, I signed my name and city of origin in the log book. For a comment, I wrote "They should have sent a poet." I'm sure they get sick of that one, too.

Socorro

Socorro is a small town. This surprised me, given that I had been seeing signs displaying the distance to Socorro for some time. I expected a medium/small city, at least. Back East, a town of Socorro's size would've only been listed on a few road signs when you came really close. It reminded me of my home town to some degree, though admittedly a bit larger.

We wandered the plaza, seeing what there was to see. Almost everything was closed, and there wasn't a soul in sight. This was Saturday afternoon, prime tourist-time, and even the visitor center was closed.

The major vibe I got in the city was that I had entered some sort of movie set that called for a "small-town" feel. We ducked into at a local coffee shop for a snack. We took our time deciding; the server made a dry quip about how busy it was (no had entered while we were deciding). After we ordered, locals involved in the local production of “You’re a good man Charlie Brown” kept strolling in. The employees cheerily discussed the upcoming play with each of them.

Elephant Butte

We arrived in Elephant Butte in the late afternoon. We set up camp on a rise overlooking the lake. Elephant Butte is a popular place to camp - the sites surrounding ours were all occupied with trailers and RVs. We were the only tent campers, though. I had never done any type of camping before, though I do love hiking. I was excited for this opportunity.

You could camp anywhere. Apparently the last time Karen was here, they camped on the beach (and got their car stuck in the sand). Given that I had only rented a Toyota Corolla, we didn't risk this and chose to make use of one of the established sites right off the road. These sites consisted of a small, rectangular buildings with walls on three sides and a roof, a perforated metal table and benches, and a fire pit.

Karen had borrowed a 5-person tent from some friends. It provided more space than necessary (at least, 8 people could hang out in it comfortably). The tent had mesh in the ceiling and walls, which was sort of cool - I was able to watch the moon crawl across the sky while I shivered later that night.

Sunset over the lake.

Clouds over a mountain at night.

A shot of the piers shortly after dark. During the warmer months, the lake is used for water sports.

Our campsite at night.

This was one of the trees near our site. Karen may have taken this shot - I was showing her how to use the tripod and camera.

Karen cooked us steak Fajitas for dinner. Somehow the chill in the air combined with the smell of cooking meat whet my appetite more than I would've expected. The Fajitas were excellent, probably the best meal I had this trip.

Karen poking the fire. It's amazing how quickly the temperature drops in the desert. Merely three hours earlier, I was wearing a t-shirt. By this point, I think I had three layers on.

I loved having a tripod for this trip. This was a 30 second exposure of the horizon.

Stars above our camp. You can clearly make out Orion in the center of the photo.

I really loved having a tripod and taking photos of the stars.

So, camping in New Mexico in early March is cold. This cannot be stressed enough, and is probably my biggest lesson from this trip. Karen had told me to wear layers. I didn't heed her advice as completely as I should have; I wore only a hoodie above my normal clothes. I'm pretty sure my socks had holes in them. When I first laid down to sleep, my feet were (understandably) cold. I took my blanket and wrapped it around my feet. Eventually, this sorta worked and I dozed off… when I woke, the moon had moved maybe a third across the sky, and my upper body was incredibly cold. I zipped up my bag further and tried to duck down. It’s amazing how much of a difference it made to create some sort of pocket in the sleeping bag to shield my face; merely exposing my face to the air was uncomfortably chilly.

So, in sum, the night was long and cold; still, it was a valuable experience and, looking back, I have to say that I'm glad I did it.

Elephant Butte, White Sands, and the Valley of Fires (Day 3)

During the night, I kept fading into and out of sleep. Most of my waking thoughts were semi-delirious, and stuck in some strange loop, cycling through (1) how cold I was inside of my sleeping bag, (2) how it was much colder outside of my sleeping bag, and (3) I wonder when the life-giving sun will return. Eventually, I noticed it getting light, and woke just sunrise. I didn't drag myself out of bed until the sun had already broken the horizon. Karen was still sleeping, so I left the tent and explored a bit.

Sunrise at Elephant Butte.

I took a trek down the road a bit, and took this shot of our campsite.

Crane in Elephant Butte Lake.

I was really hoping to sneak up further on the crane. It got spooked while I was still pretty far away and flew off.

I reached the shore not too long after. There was no one else awake, as far as I could see. It was kind of nice having the beach to myself. The sun had already begun to warm me up. The distinct lack of vegetation at the shore made the place seem strange to me.


Karen making us a hearty breakfast. She is a pro at this whole camping thing. Our breakfast consisted of BACON, oatmeal (with flax seed, raisins, almonds, cinnamon, and at least one other thing I’m forgetting) and flour tortillas with honey and some sort of chocolate almond spread.

After our leisurely breakfast, we broke camp and headed to WHITE SANDS.

White Sands



Disclosure: I’ve never been to a desert before. I've trekked through mountains, jungles, and swamps. I’ve been to plenty of beaches, some with pretty fair-sized dunes. However, I’ve never been to an honest to god desert, with dune after dune extending to every horizon. As such, White Sands was probably my favorite site on this trip; it was just so –alien-, so unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

Welcome to the moon.

The sand in White Sands is made of incredibly fine quartz crystals. The wind always blows from the same direction and gradually blows the sand from one side of the desert to the other.

There are several popular spots with large parking areas that have been plowed. There were also places where the dunes crept into the road with warning pylons around them, and signs warning to watch out for sand plows.

Visitors can purchase sleds in the gift shop. The sleds were a bit pricey for a piece of molded plastic, but I couldn’t imagine the next time I would be able to sled down a sand dune, so I splurged. Essentially, you could stop anywhere you saw high dunes that looked like they’d be fun to sled down. We kept an eye out for tall, steep ones. The sand is actually very soft if you tumble in it. Such falls are all but inevitable.

So, the thing about sand-sledding that isn’t entirely apparent from the pictures is that it’s not nearly as quick as sledding in snow. I had to use my feet to push off and half the time to keep going. Perhaps I was doing it wrong. However, if you end up having one side of the sled dig into the sand, you can tumble pretty and quickly.

Karen getting ready to sled down a hill.

It's really a pretty relaxed ride.

After sledding a bit, we hiked off into the dunes. Because Karen had planned out everything in advance, she had told me to pick up sunglasses. I didn’t bother trying to find glasses that would go over my prescription lenses; I went for the snow boarding goggles.

Karen in the vast emptiness.


I carved my monogram into the shifting sand. I’m sure there is some metaphor here.

The wind started picking up while we were there. You can see the sand blowing across some of the dunes. Later on, while we stood atop another crest, the sand battered us relentlessly. The sun was a big ball of unrelenting rage.


Most trails I’ve been on have been hikes in a mountain or forest. I’ve even been on some grassland trails. One trait remained constant despite the terrain – a path was apparent, either paved or gravel or dirt packed by the passage of many feet. In White Sands, the trail is a set of guideposts through the dunes. You reach one, then scan the horizon for the next guidepost. You are free to leave the trail as you wish – there are no signs or barriers. That's a risk you can take, of course, but they advise taking a map and compass. In this picture, you can see one of the guideposts on the crest of the next hill. This was one of the strangest trails I’ve been on, and, because of this strangeness, one of the most fun.


Karen, battered by the incessant wind and scorched by the merciless sun, stands atop the next rise.

Hopefully this gives some idea of the wind speed in the dunes that afternoon.

We rested for a time on top of one of the dunes.

So, this is how the terrain looks at the entrance to White Sands. Not everything is dunes - bushes and plants become more sparse and smaller the deeper you go into the dunes. This looks like some beaches I've seen.

Valley of Fires

We left White Sands in the middle of the afternoon on Sunday. We ended up having dinner at a chain restaurant (Applebee’s, I think), in Almogordo. However, because we left White Sands relatively late in the day, we reached the Valley of Fires well after sunset. We passed some campers, but for the most part the park was empty and dark. Unlike the previous night, there was heavy cloud cover. We couldn't see any stars. We parked and walked down the small hiking trail, flashlights and tripod in hand. After several hundred feet, we left the trail in search of the lava rocks we knew to be in the park’s interior.

What would a vacation with Karen be if she did not pick up or touch rocks?


Karen victoriously finds LAVA to walk on.

So, the flash from my camera is a bit harsh. We got the idea that if we set up the tripod with a 30 second shutter speed, then shined the flashlight back and forth where the camera was pointed, we could selectively illuminate the scene. I like this shot because it reminds me of underwater vent pictures I've seen.

Karen is looking for her Preciousssss.

A sedate Charlie caught on camera!

The Valley of Fires is fun!

We still have a long drive ahead of us to get back to Santa Fe. It was noteworthy only in that, on some random road, a three-foot wide tumbleweed flew into the road right in front of us. It's probably a good thing that Karen was driving. She just plowed over it. I'm not used to large objects flying in front of my car, and would likely have tried to swerve. It was a tough drive to do, on account of exhaustion on both of our parts. Still, we took shifts, refueled with some McDonald's fries and a smoothie, and persevered.

So, thanks to Karen for planning out and accompanying me on this mini-road trip. It was a blast.