New Mexican wonders

I spent part of Saturday at national park that I would have thought would be a monument, another part at a monument that I thought would be a park, and the rest on highways that I thought would never end.

Ben, another intern in my department at SNL (who turns out to be a CMU student) picked me up at 5 in the morning and we struck out in the general direction of Texas. The first attraction was the Valley of Fires, which turned out to look more interesting on Google maps than from the road. It's an old lava flow (not formed by any recently volcanic activity) but pretty much just looks like a boulder field. There is a stretch along I-40 somewhere around Gallup, NM where you can see some lava flows, and I actually think those are more interesting.

We continued on to Roswell. Ben wanted to get pictures of the outside of the alien museum, but otherwise it was essentially just a quick drive through. They have really capitalized on the alien hype, and it seems like every other storefront has some type of Martian in the window. I was quite amused. Now I can say I've been to Roswell, and just need to come up with some abduction story to go with it.

Our first real destination was Carlsbad Cavern. I suggest following the link to read some of the facts and figures. The biggest room in the cavern is 750ft below the surface, so either you walk down a mile long path, or ride down the elevator. We elected for the scenic route: the path. It turned out to be in better condition than most roads in Pittsburgh. The asphalt surface is about 4 feet wide and lined with stainless steel railings along (both sides of) its entirety. I brought a flashlight, but it was more of a burden than anything else. The place is adorned with over a thousand bulbs (and tubes). You can't always see everything around you, but most of it. The cave itself is amazing. My spelunking experience prior to this is derived completely from Tongue River Cave (near Sheridan) and would scare away anyone with claustrophobic tendencies. There you have to think skinny, hunch down, crawl, and watch your steps. Carlsbad Cavern is more like a cathedral. I spent more time looking up at the high ceilings than anything else. The stalactites and stalagmites made me think of pipe organ plumbing and ornate woodwork you might see on old church. It was definitely a cavern in a big wide openings sense, and not a cave. At the bottom disabled visitors can even share in the experience on the wheelchair accessible portion of the path. The link has pictures, so take a look, and remember that everything is actually bigger than how it looks in the image. By the way, the cavern is a national park.

After returning to the car we started our return trip. We took a westward bearing, and eventually pulled in to the White Sands National Monument visitor station. I actually enjoyed this part of our trip the most. 275 square miles in middle of the desert is covered with gypsum sands. The granules are actually crystalline, and would normally be transparent if they were bigger and polished. The scratches on the surface (from blowing around in the wind) are what make the sand white. Again, follow the link for pictures and some facts and figures. We went on the sunset stroll with the ranger, and I took a bunch of (film based) photographs. Her little talk was interesting, and it was also fun to watch the young kids play in the sand. Here are some things that I found most interesting:

• They plow a road through the dunes just like you would in snow. In fact, you could take pictures that would look like they were from the Pacific Northwest or Michigan's UP or something. The sand is that white, and they pile it up on on the shoulders just like snow.
• This is one of three gypsum dune areas in the world. Gypsum is water soluble, so it normally gets washed away, but this area has no outlet for runoff so the gypsum collects. It's something like the salt flats in Utah: the gypsum runs down streams from the mountains, and just sits in the basin.
• Kids were 'sledding' down the dunes on disks and such. Again, you could almost be fooled by a picture into thinking they were on snow, but their clothes would give it away.
• If you dig down in the sand, you eventually hit water, and it's really shallow. The hole they used to demonstrate was only about 3 feet deep. The water is foul, and has a strong odor to it. Remember water doesn't flow out of this region, only in.
• The government has a large missile range that essentially surrounds the monument. The Trinity site (where the first atomic bomb was detonated) is in land that is now part of the range. Ben and I actually drove within 20 miles of it. They only allow visitors two days a year (once in April and once in October), so we couldn't stop.

We watched the sunset and drove around a bit more, then got back on the highway and started heading home. At 1:30 Sunday morning I was finally in bed. I had spent most of the day on asphalt, even the 2-3 hours we were underground.