Spaceport America

Some of you may not know that a Spaceport exists.  It is located here in the middle of the desert, about 20 miles or so to the SE of TorC.  The project is a joint venture between the state of New Mexico and several private enterprises.  While the first commercial passenger flight into space is still somewhere on the horizon, the facility has already been the site of a number of launches.  If you are interested in more information, do a search for Spaceport America.

On the way to the spaceport, we also visited the 'other' side of the dam at Elephant Butte Lake and you'll see some areas in our photos that you may remember from an earlier post when we explored the lake by boat.

The day drew to a close with another spectacular show in the sky.  The whole day's photos are available here.

Hillsboro and Hatch Revisitado

Shopping in a Ghost Town?  Well yes, Deb and Mary found some fabulous buys in Hillsboro in a really nice little shop that is probably the greatest contributor to the economy of the town.  We also enjoyed a great afternoon snack at one of the two local cafes which included fresh cut fries, a really great slice of pie and coffee of course.  We then traveled on to Hatch for more shopping.  This time it was for food, including just a few of the remaining chilis which are now nearly gone until the next harvest except for the dried and frozen varieties which can still be found in great numbers.  More of our "Revisitado" adventure can be found in the photos and associated captions available here.

Fastnachts Anyone?

For the last several years, our crew has made PA Dutch donuts (Fastnachts) for other folks in the RV Parks where we are staying.  This year, Fastnacht Day (aka Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, etc. - depending on your location) falls on a travel day for us and we therefore decided to hold it a bit early here in Elephant Butte.  No one here had ever heard of a Fastnacht, but they were enjoyed by all!

This area has many "Ghost Towns" - vestiges of the gold and silver mining days.  We've now visited several of them and will probably see a few more while we are here.  Click here for some photos from our trip to Chloride and there is info about the town here if you are interested.

Hatch

The town of Hatch, NM, is the Green Chili Capital of the World; this, according to the folks of Hatch and New Mexico.  OK, it may well be true.  We didn't really see a lot of green chili peppers during our visit, but there sure were lots of red ones.

On the way back from Hatch, we explored part of the Lake Valley Backcountry Byway including a visit to Hillsboro, which is one of 9 Sierra County Ghost Towns.  Hillsboro was the County Seat until it was moved to TorC in 1938.  Formerly a mining town which produced $ millions in gold and silver, it now has a population of only about 80.  Please see our photos and captions for more information.

New Mexico Sunset

Like most people, we enjoy beautiful sunsets and it is almost a daily event here and sometimes all around us. 

These photos are just from tonight's viewing.

And now for something completely different:

 

It looks much like many of the photos we've included in some of our recent blogs, right?  Nope, it is Mars in a photo taken just about two months ago.

On The Lake

On Wednesday afternoon (12th of Feb), it was our great pleasure to spend an afternoon on Elephant Butte Lake, thanks to Shane who graciously volunteered his boat (and experience).  Along with viewing various points along the shore of the lake, we also visited the lake's three marinas, Marina Del Sur, Dam Site Marina and Rock Canyon Marina.  One of the nicest parts of the trip was enjoying our lunch together on the boat as we just drifted for a while near the mesas you will see in the photos.

Please see the captions of these photos for additional information.  If you get the idea that we're having a great time in all these discoveries and explorations, you're absolutely right.

Veterans Memorial Park at TorC

On Saturday (Feb 8) we visited the Veterans Memorial Park and Museum at Truth or Consequences.  Both the grounds and museum are a very nice and inspiring tribute and include a scale replica of the Vietnam Memorial and markers inscribed with statistics and descriptions of all the major conflicts that the U.S. has been involved in over the years.  Further information is available here.

We then took a bit of a drive, just more of our area familiarization attempts, before heading to downtown for the Second Saturday Art Hop, a monthly event here where all the art shops, etc. are open in the evening.

You can view the day's photographs here.

A Walk Around T or C

While we are in Elephant Butte, NM, we drive to the neighboring town of Truth or Consequences (formerly Hot Springs) for groceries and the like since there are no such facilities right here. The town is known here as T or C (which seems to be pronounced by the locals more like T-R-C)and the reason for the odd name can be found here.

These photos represent a bit of what you might see when taking a walk around the town.

Elephant Butte Lake, NM

For the entire month of February, 2014, we will be residing with our traveling companions at the Elephant Butte Lake RV Resort in Elephant Butte (next to Truth or Consequences), NM, certainly one of the nicest RV parks we've ever found in our travels since 2007.  We usually find something we really like about most places we've ever stayed, but this location is nothing but positive as you might guess from these photos.

We have done just a bit of exploring of the area so far since, like the rest of the country, we are hoping for some warmer weather soon.  While we've not been in any snow, it has reached as close as about 50 miles North of us as of last night and we've seen it in some of the higher elevations in the mountains that surround us.

Del Rio to Carlsbad
On our last full day in Del Rio, we attended a UFO festival which included a number of lectures by some of the top researchers in the field, a showing of the movie "Fire in the Sky" and a costume, parade and food event in a nereby park.  Among those making presentations were Stanton Friedman who has appeared in many films and TV documentaries concerning UFO's and Travis Walton, the victim of the 1975 "Fire in the Sky" UFO abduction case.

On the first leg of our journey toward Carlsbad, NM, we took a short side trip to Langtry, TX, home of Judge Roy Bean and the "Law West of the Pecos" which included a very impressive cactus garden which is shown in many of these photos.  Also some of the pictures include a view of Mexico not too much in the distance.

Visit to Roswell

We arrived in the Carlsbad, NM on Monday, January 27th and settled in at the Brantley Lake State Park which is located just about 12 miles North of the city.  The lake is quite large, but not nearly as huge as it could be, due to years of very little precipitation in the region.  The lake would be normally fed by 7 rivers, but most of them are dry, with the Pecos being the only one where we've seen some water.  Some of our party were originally hoping to do some fishing, but we understand from some other folks here that it would probably be a waste of time.

On Tuesday we took about an hour drive to Roswell, NM, the site of a famous UFO crash in 1947.  While it is not currently possible to visit the actual crash site, there is the International UFO Museum and Research Center which is open to the public.  While some of the displays are tongue-in-cheek depictions of Little Green Men, etc., the exhibit hall includes infromation on the Roswell Incident, Crop Circles, aliens depicted by ancient cultures and other UFO and abduction stories, facts and photos from around the world.  See our own photos here. The truth is out there.
Carlsbad Caverns

I cannot possibly describe the beauty we encountered in the several hours we spend above and within the caverns.  We walked for miles through the caverns, impressed with the great size (not feeling at all confined as in some other caverns and caves we've visited).  We hope you enjoy the many photos an get at least some sense of what we saw.  We took so many pictures that we were killing batteries left and right and I've thus broken them down into three sets as listed below:
Camera
Deb's Phone
Ty's Phone
Brantley Lake State Park

We spent five days at this location while we explored the vicinity.  These photos are intended to give you some sense of the excellent location and some of the views we enjoyed.
From Carlsbad to Elephant Butte, NM

On February 1st we traveled to our new location via El Paso, TX.  Hmm, NM to TX to NM (don't ask).  We share with you here a few photos of the trip and more entries will follow as we explore this new area.