Back to Long Beach, California

3 October 2013

We didn’t dilly-dally the rest of the way home.  North of Las Cruces is the White Sands Missile Range. The reason I am the only one in my family not born in South Dakota is because my father was doing construction work at the WSMR when I was born. The thing I can’t figure out is why I was born in Tucumcari.  My mom always said that it was because that was where the closest hospital was, but when I look at the map, it seems to me that Albuquerque would have been closer.  Oh well, makes for interesting dinner conversation.

 

We stopped at the museum and missile park just inside the Las Cruces gate.  The museum is in an old office building – I immediately recognized the government construction model of manager offices and conference rooms around the perimeter of a large bull-pen area, having lived in that environment for much of my professional career. There were some great exhibits on Trinity – the project that tested the first atomic bomb. Twice a year, they lead caravans out to ground zero, but we missed it by a week. The missile park had nothing newer than the 1980s, but it was well displayed.  Except for one missile, which apparently fell over recently having rusted out at the base. If a missile falls in a missile park and no one is there to hear it, does it make a noise?

 

We had delicious Mexican  food in Las Cruces, the chili con carne was amazing! We did overnight stops near Tucson and Blythe as we just charged down Interstate 10.  Because of the coming high winds, we cancelled our visit to Indio and got home on Thursday instead of Friday.

 

We were gone for 92 days, put over 8,000 miles on our van and camped in 12 states. I was able to cross several items off my bucket list including visiting the Gateway Archway in St. Louis and Carlsbad Caverns. We discovered some great places like the Amana Colonies and visited some of our favorite spots like Notre Dame and Shipshewana. Along the way, we sampled some of the local cuisine; you can skip the horseshoe sandwich in Springfield, Illinois, but the MaidRite burgers in Iowa were pretty good.

 

I love our new trailer, the extra space with the slideouts really made our camping comfortable. As usual, Russ did a terrific job driving and being the photographer (most of the photos in this blog are his.)

 

I found out lots about our ancestors in Iowa and will be spending the next several weeks scanning and updating my family tree.  Searching out these ancestors added another dimension to our enjoyment of the places we visited. And it led us to places that aren’t on the regular tourist routes. That can make it a bit challenging to find a decent campground but we managed.

 

All in all, a great way to spend a summer in our retirement.  Next trip – a cruise around South America. 

Guadalupe Peak, the tallest peak in Texas at over 8700 feet.

Entering Texas - the Guadalupe mountains in the distance are part of the 40 mile long reef that includes the Carlsbad Caverns. 

A closer look at the Guadalupe Mountain range. Guadalupe Peak is the last one on the left.

Just around the bend from Guadalupe Peak is El Capitan.

The salt flats on the way to El Paso were covered with water from recent rains.

It is a rather steep descent into the El Paso area, pretty much straight down.

 

This is a slide rule for calculating missile parameters.  The largest slide rule I have seen.

A V2 rocket made for testing at the White Sands Missile Range. After WWII, the U.S. made arrangements for the German rocket engineers, including Werner Von Braun, to come to New Mexico to design and test rockets.

A Patriot launcher used during the Iraq war.



This is a casing for the Fat Man atomic bomb. The bomb was tested at White Sands (only once), then was used for the Nagasaki bombing.

This looks like the kind of rocket that Buck Rogers rode in the old movies.