Gypsum, Amps & Beeves

Day 6

We made our way west toward Alamogordo in the morning. WiFi is proving hard to find, so I'll have to post these later. The Garmin is starting to behave itself again.

We saw our first free range cattle as we left the Pecos area. (The locals say PEE-cos, not PAY-cos, BTW.) MarKay refers to cattle as Beeves (plural of Beef?), mainly to annoy Sean. We snagged some Pecos river water as we left.

We passed through the Lincoln National Forrest, which took us over the mountains on a twisting 2 lane road. This was a lot of fun, since it was lined with local businesses--all the hotels, shops and eateries were home grown. The only chains we saw were gas stations. It was another time machine experience. We stopped and a little petting zoo/snack stand and stretched our legs. We bought Sean a cool hand carved slingshot, presumably made locally.



We dropped down into Alamogordo after some amazing scenery and made our way to White Sands. Fortunately, there were no missile tests in progress, so we got to go right into the Park. We got Sean a sled disk and headed out onto the White gypsum dunes. It was a bit windy, but we had fun sliding down the dry, powdery sand. Sean earned another Junior Ranger badge and we headed off toward Arizona.



After dropping down out of the San Andres mountains, near Edwards AFB, we encountered our first border patrol check point. They gave us a quick inspection and waved us through (three pale people). It was disconcerting.

As we neared the state line, the car air conditioning went out. The sun was setting and a sign informed us that there was a ghost town nearby, so we pulled of at a place we had a hotel coupon for. It turned out to be a dive, but we're committed now. MarKay and I are not feeling very safe. We felt watched as we drove through the parking lot (mainly because several people were watching us closely.) Our room is on the back side of the hotel, which doesn't help.

One bright point is that we have secured all the valuable electronics in our room, giving us the opportunity to recharge batteries on laptops, games, and phones. It's difficult to keep everything juiced up of the cars electricity during the day.

Hopefully there will be a continuation to this adventure in the morning...