We hope your weather is spring-like at home! Here, we had our weekend of winter for this trip. It snowed for the first time since we left Ohio in December. Tiny flakes, but very pretty as we drove over the Sacramento Mountains in the town of Cloudcroft. This is our fourth week in the desert now, and I can say I absolutely loved seeing the town of Cloudcroft - mountainous, green, and beautiful, with even a nice stream flowing along near the road where we drove. The snowflakes were really pretty there, too.
We got down the mountain and into Alamogordo and are camped in the desert again. This desert, though, has a view of the mountains in one direction, and a view of White Sands and more mountains in the other direction. Char and I both say that we're enjoying New Mexico more and more all the time, and our views here are quite nice!
White Sands National Monument was our reason for stopping here for the week, and it lived up to the hopes I'd had for it. We got to go sled riding down the sand dunes! It was so fun! It was also the only sledding we'd done this year, so everyone enjoyed it. Sure is a lot hotter, but this is our winter of our trip - snow and sled riding this week!
After sledding, we explored White Sands National Monument a bit some more, liking it so much that we decided we'd definitely be back.
In the meantime, our RV'ing friends that we've ended up seeing a bunch arrived in town. We visited them at Oliver Lee State Park and did some more scenic desert hiking.
The next day, we toured a pistachio farm. Apparently, pistachios are mainly grown in the middle east, but this section of New Mexico has exactly the same climate as Iran. Who knew? It was fun to me to see the process of growing, shaking, cleaning, and cooking all the pistachios. The whole family enjoyed all the taste-testing of various flavored pistachios. Of course, there's also the world's largest pistachio. It's funny to me how many towns have the world's largest... something. Makes me want to put the world's largest pancake or something in my hometown. Gotta love pancakes. But, here's some pistachio pictures:
We then went to a zoo in town, and then a Denny's, as kids eat free, and who wouldn't want to feed eight starving children for free? Poor waitress.
The next day, we toured the space museum here. Alamogordo has been the home of rocket launches and lots of space exploration. Also, White Sands is where the first atomic bomb was tested. I guess these things are possible in the desert, where not many people live.
Lots of space stuff to look at and our kids were mildly obsessed with the window washer
With the remainder of the week, I made our family go back to Cloudcroft. I'd thought it was so pretty! The kids (in particular one child who will remain nameless) were stating their disappointment with this decision, claiming to be tired of riding in the truck and looking out the window. They sure enjoy the adventure of this trip, but the scenery out the windows is lost on them. I guess some things aren't special yet, when you're only 9,8,5, or 3. I wonder what's not special to me yet, that will be when I'm even older someday? Wouldn't it be nice to know ahead of time what you'd look back on your life and wish you'd appreciated more?
Anyway, it was a good short winter here in Alamogordo, and a very enjoyable week. We hope you're doing well, too!
Cactus! It's what's for dinner
E caught a tumbleweed
3 comments:
What fun! I've heard about the "sand riding" from a few different friends... so neat to see your boys dressed for summer while on their sleds!
Love picturing where you are. As we traveled cross country... so many places I would have loved to explore!
um... that was actually by Mrs. Toolman... Mel
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