New Mexico...the nerdy bits!

Our first destination in New Mexico was Bottomless Lake State Park near Roswell. After our visit to Monahan’s Sandhills and a long drive, we were tired and hot. We stopped in Roswell on the way to the park to visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center. It was jam-packed with photos, witness accounts, and other evidence of the Roswell UFO Incident in the 1940s as well as other stories of visitors from other worlds. We learned some things - for instance I never knew that there were actually 3 kinds of close encounters - and I think the girls eyes were opened to some perspectives they weren’t previously aware of.

It took about 30 minutes to get to our campsite, and although it was late in the day it was very hot outside. Before setting up we decided to go for a swim in Lea Lake, which was a sight for sore eyes after a long day driving through the desert with nothing but cows and oil pumpjacks as far as our eyes could see. The lake, which had been created by a sinkhole, was VERY cold...it felt freezing....I found a reference that it is usually around 10C in spring and autumn...no mention of winter! A family nearby was speaking Polish and making bets on whether or not we’d actually get in the water...we didn’t know this until Voych told us later but we did all get in all the way! The night was VERY windy. The noise of the wind woke us up a few times and it was also very cold; we left as quickly as we could the next morning after hot drinks and a quick breakfast.

I think Voych will be writing about our next stop, so I’m going to skip a day!

A couple of days later we found ourselves driving on a beautiful winding road through the mountains of southwest NM towards the Glia Cliff Dwellings National Monument. The monument includes a trail that allows you to climb up the side of a cliff and actually enter rooms constructed by the Mogollan people around 1200 CE. For some reason the dwellings were abandoned around 1300, and what we see today is 80% original construction. It was fun to imagine living up here, protected by the cliff with amazing views of the gorge. It is really amazing that this site allows you to actually enter the rooms so that you can get a good idea of their size and scale.

We decided not to camp that night - it was supposed to be terribly cold - and instead booked a camping cabin at the Silver City KOA. It was really cute and economical. We still had to cook outside (and it was COLD in the morning) but we had a really cosy sleep. The next morning we wound our way west and north skirting the Gila National Forest, part of the world’s first declared wilderness area (since 1924). The views were incredible. Eventually we started driving east and soon reached our destination - the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, also known as the Very Large Array. The observatory consists of 27 radio telescopes, each about 25 m across, that are distributed in a Y-shaped array on the Plains of San Agustin. The location is ideal for radio astronomy as it is at a high altitude (less atmosphere), it is dry (less water vapour), it is isolated (few stray signals from civilization), and it is flat. It was definitely worth the drive to get there; Voych and I, and soon the girls, were taken with the scale of the telescope. We saw a short documentary about the array, then went on a self-guided walking tour of the grounds. It was neat to learn about how the telescopes’ positions are changed over time, with distributions ranging from a Y-shape only 1 k across to one that is 26 km across. While we were there the diameter of the Y-shape was about 11 km (configuration B, the second largest). Each configuration allows for observations of differing resolution, and it was explained to us that many projects require images at different resolutions. As the configuration only changes every 3-4 months, it can take some time to collect data for a given project.

We left the array late in the afternoon and decided to drive all the way to Albuquerque to camp that night. More on New Mexico to come...some more sandy bits from Voych, and at least one more post about our last couple of days.

I bet you can all tell we’ve got wifi tonight. :)

Sweet dreams everyone!

Lea Lake...brrrr!

Very Large Array

UFO museum

KOA cabin

Gila Cliff dwellings

'The barn' at the VLA...a 28th telescope is always waiting!

Closeup of telescope

Hike up to Gila Cliff dwellings

Evening at Bottomless Lake State Park