The Land of Enchantment
After what seemed like forever we crossed into New Mexico on Interstate 10. They did a great thing building the Interstate highway system, but I think they are designed to be traveled at 80 MPH or more. At 60 you feel like you are not even moving.
For our first night in the Land of Enchantment we stayed at a Harvest Host location, Shakespeare Ghost town.
These are some of the remaining buildings on the main drag. They are all built out of Adobe bricks. There was even a railroad spur built into the town in its heyday.
This is Dave, he is the owner of the town and chief tour guide. He gives a great tour. He and his wife, and now a helper, are the only residents of this town. It would be cool to live in a ghost town.
The hotel in town has a bar. The story goes that the round holes in the walls are from the patrons shooting flys off the wall.
This stove was used to cook for up to a couple hundred people a day. Lots of time must have been spent sweating over this to cook for all the hungry miners.
The dining room was good sized but must have been full all day long to get everyone fed.
If you complain about the cooking, you have options, left or right noose. No the real story is that they had 2 dudes that needed to be stretched and no trees around. They left them overnight to cool and in the morning when the stagecoach showed up and the people rolled in for breakfast they had to take down the stiffs first.
The town has a full service and completely functional blacksmith shop. I would have loved to fire up the furnace and make some stuff. The original shop burned down about 10 years ago when an ember from the furnace jumped out and ran amok.
Up on the bluff overlooking Las Cruces is this “Recycled Roadrunner”. It is made from all recycled stuff, the underside is old leather tennis shoes and his butthole was a brush from a floor scrubber!
Las Cruces is home to the Worlds Larges Chili Pepper. We stopped to get a shot of my hottie with the big hottie!
We stayed the first night in Las Cruces at Rio Grand Winery. As you can see they gave us a spot with a great view. This was a Harvest Host location.
It just so happened to be Halloween and they were having a party! Live music, people in costume and all the merriment a winery can provide.
Martha got to bust out her Halloween attire and we had a few beers from a local brewery, Spotted Dog.
The next couple of days were spent on the other side of town,the Prehistoric Trackways National Monument. There are fossils from the animals that occupied the earth before the dinosaurs.
We spent our days hiking in the hills around here taking in all the sights.
This is an old riverbed where the fossils are located. We looked a bunch and think we saw some, but the pictures just did not show anything.
So far, everywhere you go has a great “golden hour”to light up the hills.
MzDazy had a nice drive through the White Sands Missle test range to get to White Sands National Park.
This is the largest Gypsum sand dunes area in the world, by a lot! There are others in Mexico, but they are tiny. This place goes on for miles in every direction.
The sand was cool to the touch, but the reflected heat was pretty good. It was 75 degrees the day we were there, but it felt much warmer.
MzDazy seems to just fit in here.
Martha has found her next home. The best part is there are no windows to wash!
Of course we stopped in Roswell to see the UFO museum and research center.
Martha found a few friends in there. These are not the beings that you should get parking lessons from.
Pickled alien anyone?
I love the X-ray image. Its eyes look like pinwheels.
After meeting our family from a galaxy far, far away it was off to Bottomless Lakes State park for some relaxing and reflection.
The last bit of sun makes for great pictures with all the stripes in the rocks.
These lakes are actually sink holes that have filled in with water. Some are as much as 90 feet deep.
You can’t complain about a spot like this to camp. The main campground was full, so they said to just pick a spot. They apologized for not being able to get an electrical hookup. Not a problem for MzDazy, those solar panels are making all the electricity we could need.
Ruckus got to swim in one of the lakes. The shore line was scalloped in front of the picnic shelters so that you could sit in the water in the shade in the afternoon. Sounds like a plan, I am sure in the middle of Summer it is very hot here.
It was cool to see all the different directions the stripes went.
Do these boots make my butt look big?
You never know who you will run into while checking in.
The rock castle on the hill across from the camp ground would have been fun to explore, but it was fenced off. I never found any information on it, so I don’t know if it was an original structure or if it was built there to get attention to the area.
MzDazy got to see another National Park! I have to say that with the limited access, no camping, and out of the way location, this is a park I would have probably never visited if we were not wandering by.
755 feet below the visitor’s center is the real show. Pictures will not do this justice. This cavern, The Big Room has a trail around it that is 1.5 miles long. In some places the ceiling is 250 feet high.
This was all formed by sulfuric acid eating away at the limestone for millions of years.
You can let your imagination run wild with some of the shapes. This dragon was watching over one end of the cavern.
This toad was just hanging around.
Some of the intricate details formed in here were amazing. I would defiantly say Carlsbad Caverns Nation Park is worth driving out of your way for.
New Mexico, or at least the southern half of it was definitely enchanting. We will have to come back in the warmer season to explore the northern half. Now its off to Texas for BBQ and beaches!