After a restful night at the casino, Moose and I continued our voyage southward but only made it about 50 miles before deciding to pull over. The Moose Lodge in Belen New Mexico is our home for the night. The day was just business as usual; work, a few chores,...
I seemed to travel the same mile over and over in some Groundhog Day hell made specifically for me. I drove 100 miles this morning to arrive at what I thought would be my spot for the rest of the day. The casino I had chosen had no place (dirt of...
A planned stop before returning to Arizona, Granite Gap is only 11 miles south off the Interstate on Hwy 80. It is BLM land that I had heard of before as a great boondocking area, and Verizon says they offer a 3G signal too, so I came out to see...
City of Rocks State Park was born some 33 million years ago from a volcanic eruption (I’m sensing a trend) 1,000 times more powerful than Mount St. Helen’s. Over time erosion has created the rock ‘city’ we see today. I had read up on the park last year, in hopes...
The mining town of Lake Valley was founded in 1878 after silver was discovered. Almost overnight, the small frontier town blossomed into a major settlement with a population of 4,000 people. Today, silver mining has played out and all that remains is a ghost town. BLM has restored the schoolhouse...
Fort Craig, established in 1854, was one of the largest and most important frontier forts in the West. Set in the rugged beauty of Socorro County, N.M., it was one of the eight forts situated along the primary north-south road in the Rio Grande Valley. Fort Craig played a crucial...
Bosque del Apache is Spanish for “woods of the Apache,” and is rooted in the time when the Spanish observed Apaches routinely camped in the riverside forest. Since then the name has come to mean one of the most spectacular National Wildlife Refuges in North America. Here, tens of thousands...
I was directed, by a pamphlet I picked up at the VLA, that there was a small ghoest town just 3.5 miles off route back to the Interstate and I wasn’t going to pass up such an easy target to sight-see and take some photographs. Kelly, misspelled when registered at...
The Very Large Array (VLA), one of the world’s premier astronomical radio observatories, consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration on the Plains of San Agustin fifty miles west of Socorro, New Mexico. Each antenna is 82 feet in diameter. The data from all 27 antennas is combined...
Three villages make up Acoma Pueblo: Sky City (Old Acoma), Acomita, and McCartys. The Acoma have continuously occupied the area for more than 800 years, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. Acoma tribal traditions estimate that they have lived in the village for...
