Saturday
4th Avenue in downtown Tucson is famous for its semi annual street fair, which happens to be this weekend, so we felt that we had to go along and have a look.
It was rather busy, but fun
A lone policeman controls where the crowd and the traffic cross
All the normal booths, but some lovely art/craft work for sale, all too pricey or untransportable for us, but we enjoyed the stroll and the looking.
An interesting 'Here's looking at you' peacock feather dress
Sally was rather taken with a number of clothes for the grandkids (sorry, nothing bought) and Terry nearly fell asleep in a Hawaiian hammock chair.
After considerable administrative confusion we managed to get a site at the enigmatically named Hueco Tanks State Park. We only expected to use it as a stopover between Carlsbad and Albuquerque, however as we entered the park we became ensnared in the timeless beauty that is Huego Tanks. The S.P. is small. It is centred on an igneous intrusion/pluton, that is a huge lump of magma that rose almost to the surface, cooled and then the softer rocks were eroded away leaving it as a big lump above the surface of the desert. (a bit like Eyres Rock). One of its unique features, apart from the jumble of big rocks, with nooks and crannies and caves, is that when it does rain here (14" per year) the impervious rocks collect water in those spaces and hold it for many months. This in turn enables a wide variety of life to survive. It is like an oasis. The availability of food and water also made Hueco Tanks a magnet for people. So remains of habitation from 6000 years have been found. Part of the evidence for this is a large number of wall/cave paintings which date from 1000 years ago. Boy did we enjoy wandering round. Saturday the wind got up again (it is the windy month) and we had another White Out (like at Lee Oliver last Sunday). I found a permanently dripping tap at one campsite and sat and watched as birds and a rabbit came and drank from it. On Sunday Morning we took part in a guided tour of one part of the rock. It was fascinating to hear about all the different peoples that have inhabited the place and to see some of the rock art they left behind.
Today we have visited what I think are the most famous and best caverns in the world. Carlsbad Caverns. Known for thousands of years but only explored since 1898 and opened to the public in 1933. They are still exploring the system, some parts are more than 100 miles long. The part that we were able to explore is more than half a mile long, with a path 1 1/4 miles long, all in one cavern. To get to it you can either walk in the natural entrance or ride the elevator 750 foot down to the reception area the bottom. It has a restaurant, gift shop and restrooms. Once we had oriented ourselves and got used to the 56 degrees F we set off. What a fabulous walk amongst the many rock features, stalactites, stalagmites, rock curtains, pools, high ceilings, huge drops, masssive features and tiny little cameos of rock formations. Well we took three hours to get round the loop of the big room and had a great time. We took many pictures, not all of them came out, but I expected that in the low light conditions. However the ones that I have published do not really give any idea of the scale of the caverns, but at least we ahve tried.
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 SacramentoMountains, which form the East edge of the Tularosa Basin. There were three reasons for this,
It was there and it would be interesting to explore the very different environment up in the mountains.
The National Solar Laboratory has its main observatory in a place called Sunspot, on Sacramento Peak and can be visited.
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).
We had come to Lee Oliver S.P. principally because it is quite close to the White Sands National Park. Today we would visit the park. We had decided that the the best time to visit was early morning, when it is cooler, so we packed a picnic and set off. After a brief stop at the Visitors Center, where we found out:
The White Sands are Gypsum (calcium Sulphate), water soluble mineral, which is blown from several nearby lakes in the Tularosa Basin.
The Tularosa Basin has no water outlet, so run off from the surrounding mountains gathers and evaporates. leaving gypsum crystals behind.
Wind Action blows the gypsum crystals from the dry lakes and they gather in this one area.
There is so much gypsum that the dunes cover an area of 270 Sq Miles and are up to 60 feet thick.
Though transparent the wind action scratches the surface of the tiny crystals, giving them a white surface.
Microbes and algae are able to establish themselves in the sheltered spaces between the dunes, which is the foundation for a complete ecosystem. Many of the plants and animals are unique to the White Sands, as they have lost colouration as a camouflage.
Plants have a number of mechanisms to help them survive in the shifting dunes. e.g. the Yucca can grow faster than the dunes build up, so always have the growing part of the plant above the dune level.
Enough of this science talk. We wanted to get in there and see for ourselves. The dune area is so big that a road takes you 6 miles to its center. On the way we stopped at a boardwalk which went out over one of the interdune areas and we could see many of the unique features of the dunes. Driving on we reached the picnic area, here we found a number of other people enjoying the sand dunes. With a lot of effort you can climb the faces of the dunes. difficult because as soon as you step on to the dune the face collapses and starts a mini avalanche, also you immediately sink into the sand up to your ankles. Of course you could take the easy way and walk up the less steep Windward side of the dunes, but that would be too easy. One of the reasons for people visiting the dunes is to sled down the steep face of the dune, using a poly sled, a bit like a large Frisbee, which you sit, lie, stand, kneel on and zoom down the dune. We spent a couple of hours marvelling at the dunes, by this time the wind was starting to blow harder. The wind in this area is quite strange. In UK we expect wind to be associated with weather patterns, when we get a low pressure system we get wind. Not so here, Wind may happen at any time. It may last for a few minutes, or several days. The wind speed can often be above 20 m.p.h. We had noticed that though it is sunny and there are few trees at the campground nobody puts out their awning. This is because of the wind, which is so unpredictable and gusty. It is usually form the South West. This is of course why the sand dunes are there at all. However, we had heard that a strong wind was likely in the afternoon, which is why we visited in the morning. Although we know about the wind we did not expect its effects (though in hindsight we should have realised)! As we were visiting the dunes and the wind increased in strength, sand began to blow. Strangely enough it wasn't sand grains close to us, so was not bothersome, but we could see white clouds blowing off the dunes further away. By the time we left the park these white clouds had started to obscure the scenery, after a while it became like a white fog, bringing visibility down to about a mile. Again we were not worried as we were now leaving the park. What we found though was that the sand blowing from the dunes created a fog right along the Tularosa Basin, which is 30 miles wide and hundreds (?) of miles long. It was quite a sight - except you could not see it.
Dealey Plaza has been one of the items on 'Our Most Important Places toVisit' list since starting our travels. Strangely, although everyone in England knows the history of the assassination of John F Kennedy, the place associated with it is The Book Depository and the name Dealey Plaza is not so commonly used, whereas in the USA Dealey Plaza, quite rightly, is the focal point of the event. We did our tour of the Sixth Floor Museum, which refreshed a lot of the information we had learned over the years. It was interesting to see the reconstruction of the 'Sniper's Nest' in the corner of the Sixth Floor, disappointingly no photography was allowed. I don't quite know what they would lose by it, still they ain't gonna change because of me. The assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald seemed straight forward, with only a couple of question marks. However, it is afterwards that I have been set thinking. Like so many other assassinations there are only facts, possible facts and questions, no objectively true answers. The biggest question to me is: why did he not shoot the president on Houston Ave - where he had a much clearer, closer shot, with the car coming in a straight line towards him? The trouble is that once you start looking for conspiracy, you find all sorts of things which can be conspiratorial. Whatever happened it was a sad day for the USA.
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We then drove round the inner ring road of Dallas, which is truly confusing unless you are really on the ball, and by mistake we had to drive into Dallas along the road which features in the opening credits for 'Dallas'. We skirted the city and drove to the north of Dallas to visit South Fork Ranch, the home of the TV series 'Dallas'. It was fun to see the house where the series was based, although all the inside shots were done in a studio in California. It was a lot smaller than we remembered from the series, but they apparently used wide angled lenses which made the place look bigger than it actually was. Inside was still as it was when it was the home of a Texas Millionaire and it was very, very plush. Most striking was the master bedroom, which is huge, with a walk-in washroom, 2 toilet rooms (his and hers we assume), a walk in shower room and a large sunken bath room. We also saw 'Daddy's' Lincoln Continental, which was very nicely looked after.
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