Back on the Road Phase II 2013

Well we're back on the road again. We stopped for 4 days at Cheyenne Mountain State park above Colorado Springs and Fort Carson. Awesome State Park we were Approx. 800-1000 feet above Colorado Springs with a 180 degree view. Awesome to watch the sunset and the lights come on in the Valley. Took a day trip up to Woodland Park, CO. about 9800 feet. Wanted to go see the wolf preserve but unfortunately it was closed on Mondays.
We then went and spent a week and a half with Peggy's Daughter Michelle and family.
I put the trailer in storage and we stayed in their beautiful home in Parker, CO just SE of Denver proper.

Our Grandson graduated from High School so we attended his ceremony. Kind of weird that it was at 8:00am on a weekday.





I got 5 rounds of golf in at their private Country Club Pradera. Beautiful course!! Peggy got in 2 rounds.
We left their place yesterday Tue the 28th on phase II of our 2013 summer journey. Will update as we move on.

Palo Duro State Park - TX

Palo Duro State Park is south of Amarillo TX in the northwest section of Texas.  It has been called the Grand Canyon of Texas.  We thought it would be a good place to stay for a few days before we made our way up to Parker CO. 

It was hard to imagine exactly what this area would look like, but suddenly there was this deep canyon right in front of us...

"Palo Duro Canyon is approximately 120 miles long and 600 to                         

  800 feet deep and is the second largest canyon in the United

States. The canyon was formed less than 1 million years ago

when the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River first carved its

way through the Southern High Plains. The rocks expose a geologic

story which began approximately 250 million years ago,

layer by layer revealing a panoramic view of magnificent color.

The canyon’s archeological and ethnological treasures suggest

about twelve thousand years of human habitation, rising and

waning as climate varied among periods of abundant moisture,

aridity, and sometimes fearfully severe drought."

 Courtesy Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum

...Driving a steep, curvy road takes you right down to the floor of the canyon.  This is a beautiful, well-maintained state park.  According to one of the volunteers the revenue from this park supports 3-4 others parks in Texas.  There are many small clusters of campgrounds and RV sites.  Hiking trails are everywhere and well-marked.  There are several geocaches hidden within the park.   While searching for a geocache, we hiked a wonderful trail that followed the top of a ridge...the views were spectacular.  Wild turkeys and friendly deer entertained us at our campsite.

The visitor center has beautiful displays and interesting videos on the history of the area.  The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was key in building the roads and structures in the park.  There are wonderful photos from this era.

Holy Bats, Man there's a huge hole in the earth!!

Carlsbad Caverns

While we were staying at Brantley State park we decided we'd do a day trip to Carlsbad Caverns. So glad we did, this was an awesome experience. Mother nature is so cool she really knows how to make people go ooh and aaah. Went into the visitor center and rented a hand held audio tour wand for $5.00. There are stops along the self guided tour where you can listen to facts and stories about the caverns.
There are several different caverns to go into. We chose to do the easy 1 mile 1 1/2 hour self guided tour of the Big Room. We actually took 3 1/2 hours to do the walk, only because I was in such wonderment of the beauty of this place.
I believe I took close to 400 pictures in the caverns most without a flash. I've paired it down to about 174. (You can see them off to the right of the blog.)
We descended 780 feet by elevator into the entrance of the Big room. We walked about 100 feet into the actual entrance to this 8 1/2 acre room.
All I can say is WOW!!! I'll let the pictures do the talking although they really don't do the caverns any justice.

Smokey the Bear - Capitan NM

Another interesting place along the Billy the Kid Scenic Byway is Capitan NM - it is the birthplace and burial site of Smokey the Bear.  The Visitor Center in Capitan has an excellent display of photos and newspaper articles along with the posters from the advertising campaign "Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires.  This campaign started in 1944 before there was a real bear to represent Smokey. 

A 2 month old bear cub was found clinging to a tree after a fire in Capitan Gap.  Firefighters rescued him and originally named him "Hotfoot Teddy" since his feet were burned.  During his recovery he was kept at the home of one of the rangers.  They flew him to Washington DC and the rest is history...the campaign grew so great after a real bear was included the post office gave Smokey his zip code since he received so much mail.  Smokey spent the rest of his life in the National Zoo.

A study was made of school children - both US and foreign - on familiar slogans revealed that given the motto "Only You" more children were able to complete "Can Prevent Forest Fires" than any other motto. 

Smokey offically "retired" in 1975 at the age of 25 (70 in human years and the retirement age of Public Service employees :).  He died at age 26.  His remains were finally buried secretly in the village of Capitan at the visitor center.

Here is a link to the Visitor Center Smokey the Bear Visitor Center .

There is a lot that I didn't include here.  There is a great brochure that contains the "True Story".  We spent a lot time there and we really enjoyed it.

Billy the Kid Scenic Byway - Ruidoso NM

The Billy the Kid Scenic Byway is a loop of about 50 miles in Lincoln Co. New Mexico.  There is a visitor center in Ruidoso.  We like to make a visitor center one of our first stops before we start see the sights in an area.  Frequently, our timing is off and the visitor centers are closed.  We left so early in the morning to do this loop we didn't have a lot information on what to see and where to stop.  We missed a few interesting things, but it was still interesting.  We stopped at the visitor center at the end of our day and it was very nice.  We loved the mosaic design on the outside.

The drive itself is through hills and mountains (up to 12,000 ft Sierra Blanca) with a lot of trees.  We didn't see a lot of Billy the Kid references along the way.  Lincoln is on the National Register of Historic Places.  We opted not pay $8 each to go in the museum and there was very little else to see there.

We did take the 10 mile detour off the byway to visit Fort Stanton.  There is a pretty cool museum there (it's free:).  There were lots of old photos of the fort and the people - I love to look at old photos.  After it was decommissioned as a military fort, Fort Stanton became a US Merchant Marine hospital for tuverculosis patients.  It was worth the side trip, it's a very pleasant place to visit.  We also found a geocache while we were there.

Oil? Who needs Oil?....Midland, TX

The Permian Basin Petroleum Museum

So we've only been on the road for 9 days now and we've seen a lot, but I must say I think the petroleum museum has to be the highlight of our trip so far. This place was so neat, informative we spent close to 4 hours here wandering around. There was definitely a lot of oil money pumped into this museum it was very well done. When you first walk in there is a room with B/W pictures of all of the donors to this museum. The only two we recognized were the 2 Bushes. The coolest part of the museum in my opinion (Peggy might think otherwise) was they had a complete wing dedicated to Chaparral Race cars. These cars were awesome and the amazing part is that each one of them are race ready. In fact every couple of months they take them out and run them on the track and then bring them back to the Museum. Lot of history on Chaparral, Bobby Rutherford and Jim Hall. Some hands on exhibits on the aerodynamics of the cars etc.
Oh yeah back to the oil. They had several wings dedicated to the history of Texas oil fields, the workers, the vehicles used back in the late 1800's to current. They also had several different types of pumps and oil derricks outside that you could drive too and roam around on.
The had a room dedicated to a mineral collection by Edward Judson. Each Specimen was in a separate plexiglass box that was top lit to show off the mineral and colors. This was pretty cool!!!
They also had a room of Canvas paintings done by several artist's depicting early Oil drilling in Texas.

UFOs and Aliens - Roswell NM

No trip to New Mexico would be complete without a stop at Roswell.  I knew very little about the events that happened (or were alledged to have happened) there July 4, 1947.  The most interesting part to me was reading all of the newspaper articles about the different theories.  We saw photos taken of the findings, art work and memorbilia from the time.

They had some unusual displays of props from the movies that have been made about Roswell.  The display of the aliens was a little hokey, but sort of cute.

I actually bought "Chronological Pictorial" of the UFO Crash At Roswell.  It has a timeline of events along with the newspaper articles and photos and interviews.  I think it will be very interesting to read.

Sunpot, NM ---- The National Solar Observatories

While we were staying in Ruidoso we decided to take a 50 mile road trip up to the National Solar Observatories. They are located atop Mount Sacramento at 9200ft. On the way up this very winding road the only wild life we saw were cows and horses on the road. We passed through Cloudcroft on the way. Nice little touristy town lots of cabins for people that want to beat the summer heat down in the valleys. We finally hit NM 6563 (named after the wave length in angstroms of light produced by hydrogen gas), on the way we stopped at Haynes Vista where you over look the valley and 25 miles in the distance you can see the White Sands National Park and how expansive it is. Also found a geocache while we were here. On up to the observatory. This place was pretty neat a lot of hands on exhibits. We were also allowed to go in to a couple of the telescopes. The nice thing was we were basically alone up there. No screaming kids, no bus load of tourists etc. :-) I think it was just Peggy and I and maybe one other couple. Before going into the largest telescope we stopped and talked with this lady that maintains the electronics. Smart lady and explained what goes on inside of the telescope while there doing sun studies. As it would happen they were doing a study and when we walked into the telescope monitoring room it was very dark. They don't  want extraneous protons bouncing around. It was cool to be able to see a sun study actually going on. I think we spent close to 3-4 hours up there roaming around. Oh did I forget to say we were at 9200 ft? Holy crap both of us could hardly breath walking around.

The White Sands....is it ever!!

As we left Deming NM heading for Ruidoso NM we passed the White Sands Missile range and into the White Sands National Park. We decided to pull in and head back on this paved and sometimes covered with sand road. WOW we were impressed the sand is pure white and looks like snow. We drove back about 6 miles into the dunes. Very impressive that out of nowhere there is all this white sand (actually it is Gypsum). Enjoy the pictures to the right.

Rock Hound State Park - Deming New Mexico

We've spent a great couple of days here at Rock Hound State Park.  We are staying in a small  - but nice campground.  One of it's best qualities is the quiet...the sites are far apart and level.  It's also cheap $14 a night - for electricity and water.  The views are spectacular.  At night you can see all of the twinkling lights of Deming.  

As you can tell from the name, rocks are an important part of this state park.  The park rangers are all knowledgeable about the geology and rocks of the area.  It's pretty cool to be able take rock from the park. 

We met a very talkative guy (Randy called him an "old guy" - but I think he was only a couple of years older than me.) who wanted to tell us all about the rocks and show us where to find interesting specimens. He camps in a tent in the park for long periods of time and just wanders around looking for "treasures" as he calls them.  The day we talked to him he had found a lot of pieces of Jasper.  One in particular he decided had been a tool of some kind for the Native Americans.  He had a magnifier out to show how it had been chipped and shaped. After we some similar things in a museum the other day ....I think he was right. 

I picked up several specimens...mainly Jasper, but I did find one that has some opal and a couple of other types of minerals. 

 

Rock Hound State Park has a day use area called Spring Canyon.  We took a drive up there to to geocache and to check it out.  We didn't get to the geocaches there ...too many muggles and then we were kicked out because they were closing the gate.  But we did see the steepest grade road we had ever come across...17% grade. 

 

We did geocache near the campgrounds and found our first "floater" cache where you have to pour water in to get the actual cache container to float to the top.