We pay our respects to El Capitan

We have now been in the Chihuahuan High Desert for 12 days, from Tacumcari, to The Valley Of Fires (lavea beds), then Lee Oliver S.P. (Alamogorda and The White Sands), Lake Brantley S.P. (Carlsbad) and here at Hueco Tanks S.P. In that time we have come to respect the desert as a harsh environment, yet one that is fascinating and complex. We are also appreciating not only the climate, but also the effect that the geology has had on the landscape. The whole area of central New Mexico has been subject to some intense land movement which has revealed rocks which are 350 million years old. The land has been shaped by water erosion as it has been desert for less than 10,000 years. Interestingly the major movements, which produced the Colorado Plateau (5,000 foot uplift from Utah down to Arizona, which produced the Grand Canyon) and the Rio Grande Rift Valley all happened about 65 million years ago (the time when dinosaurs died out). So although the dominant rocks are limestone (they form the major material for the big mountain ranges right up the Rockies) the valleys and basins in between are covered with aluvial sand of a variety of types. Limestone varies in hardness dependent on how it was formed. This with the major upthrusts and volcanic/igneous activity has led to some pretty awesome rock/mountain formations. The characteristic of these mountains is that they seem to rise abruptly from flat, valley floors. We have seen this time and again in our travels.
On Friday we planned to camp at Hueco Tanks State Park near El Paso, to do this we had to make our way even further south in order to get around the Guadaloupe Mountains. Almost the whole route (140miles) was dominated by driving round this most southern outcrop of The Rockies. The most dominant feature being a huge outcrop of limestone at its southernmost tip called El Capitan. From there the desert stretches all the way to Mexico in the south. El Capitan came into view within 30 miles of leaving Lake Brantley, we drove through its foothills to the Visitor Center and it stayed in view until we were about 20 mies from Hueco Tanks S.P. We stopped at the Visitor Center and enjoyed the scenery.
When we were stuck in Hickory Creek a couple of weeks ago we visited Denton Old Town, where we discovered that the Butterfield Stage coach line passed through on its way from St Louis to San Francisco. Well, we again found ourselves on the Butterfield Stage Route as we explored the Pinon Station, right under El Capitan. Because of the mountains and deserts further north the stage was forced to come this far south to provide a reliable route to carry mail to and from the West.
As we left El Capitan behind we crossed more desolate desert, including salt flats. Although this was a very good road we only saw a handful of cars on this stretch. One problem not mentioned was the wind, it was strong and against us. With a good wind and gentle driving our rig can cover 250 miles on a tank of gas. With a head wind that can be easily cut to 180 miles. However not only did we have a head wind we had to climb 2500 feet to get through the pass at El Capitan, go down the over side then climb steadily again for the next 50 miles. We could almost see the fuel gauge needle dropping. Oh by the way there are NO GAS STATIONS BETWEEN CARLSBAD AND EL PASO - 160 MILES! We arived at Hueco Tanks S.P. with barely a quarter tank left, and we still have to travel another 20 miles to El Paso, but I think we will be OK.
Although I have not described it adequately we were very impressed with the grand scenery of our trip from Carlsbad to Hueco Tanks S.P.

The Solar Laboratory at Sacremento Peak

After visiting the White Sands and feeling OK, we stopped in Alamogordo at the Golden Corral for lunch and then decided we would take a look at the Sacramento Mountains, which form the East edge of the Tularosa Basin. There were three reasons for this,

1. It was there and it would be interesting to explore the very different environment up in the mountains.
2. The National Solar Laboratory has its main observatory in a place called Sunspot, on Sacramento Peak and can be visited.
3. Our route with the trailer would take us across the Sacramento Mountains and we would be able to check out the steep climb to Cloudcroft, 16 Miles from Alamogordo.

in hindsight we should probably have taken a whole day for this, but we felt that we wanted to move on, so up we went.
The road to Cloudcroft is 16 miles long and climbs over 4000 feet not too bad in a car, but we were worried that the Chevy would overheat with the trailer on the back (in the event we had no trouble with the rig in going through Cloudcroft). The drive up was very beautiful and when we reached Cloudcroft we branched off to follow the mountain range south to where the Solar Laboratory is. We were now in dense pine forest, on a road which stitched back all over the place, evey now and a gain you could see down to the Tularosa Basin below, or rather you could have if it was not full of sand blowing in the wind. Even though we were in southern New Mexico we were now high enough that there was snow at the side of the road.
We eventually reached the Solar Observatory and took a tour.
The Observatory has a number of telescopes, all of them for looking at our sun.
Although the astronomers there do look directly a the sun and have done a lot of valuable research into the way the sun behaves, its atmosphere (Chronoshpere) and sunspots, much of the work is done using spectroscopes, where the sunlight is passed through a prism and broken up into the separate colours which make up it spectrum. This is extremely valuable for finding the composition of the sun, the fluctuations in temperature and what is happening on its surface. The big (I mean huge) Dunn Telescope can revolve the surface of he sun down to an area of about the size of a Continent! This means that it can record spectroscopic data of the edges of sunspots and the centre of sunspots and use it to find out more about the sun. Pretty clever. On our visit we were allowed on to the viewing floor of the telescope, unfortunately the telescope had to be shut down because of the wind blowing sand particles around. (yes the same sand that we had seen in the morning was blowing up onto the mountain, 5000 feet below and 2o miles away).
As well as the variety of telescopes there it also has a fabulous view over the high Desert Plains, just above Lee Oliver State Park, unfortunately the view was restricted to about 2 miles because of the blowing sand.
So although it was fun it was a little disappointing not to have done everything we wanted to.
On the way back though we did see a herd of deer, and for the first time a herd of Female Elk (no male in sight though).