Friday, 9 September 2011

Alamogordo, Nm to Las Cruces, Nm

We hit the long road again - this time heading for the Three Rivers Petroglyphs. We went through Alamogordo (again), headed north through Tularosa, and saw a fantastic dried chilli stand on the way.

A rather chilly reception awaited us at the entrance - the ranger told us off for parking our car while we filled out the carparking permit...


Hey, lizard!

There are over 21,000 different pictures here - a few of them are based on existing nubs in the rock, or incorporate existing natural geometry. This one was created 'in the round' - with some knowledge of how the image changes as you move around it.

Hey, air force. Clash of cultures, or what?



Petroglyph animal (Armadillo?) getting nailed by arrow. They were made by the Jornada (pronounced 'Hornada') Mogollon people with stone tools between about 900 to 1400 AD.

Back through Alamogordo again, and out to difficult-to-find National Solar Observatory near Cloudcroft. After taking a wrong turn off the main road (I highly recommend this as the only way to diverge from the cloned interstate towns), we noticed all these great authentic store fronts.

It's nice to see a main street not obsessed with cleanliness - allowing nature to show it's beautiful face.

The Sacramento Canyon lookout - if you look really carefully on the horizon, you can see the White Sands Missile Base.

En route to the National Solar Observatory, you pass signs for each planetary body in the solar system, scaled up to the length of the road (interestingly, I couldn't find Pluto, but they had the asteroid Ceres!). Earth - you are here.

One of the beautiful valleys we saw on the drive to the National Solar Observatory.

Inside the Dunn Solar Telescope. 41 meters above ground, most of it is under your feet - another 67 meters. A simple 3-mirror telescope, the top bearing sits on liquid mercury!It was very humbling to see such ancient stone artifacts in the morning, and precise monuments to human discovery in the afternoon. Then it was back to our little motel room at Las Cruces, which in Spanish means 'The Crossroads'. No, not that one!

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