Adventure Wednesday #2

For my second Adventure Wednesday, I traveled a few miles past Alamogordo (fat Alamo?!) to The White sands National Monument. This is a fascinating place, with a completely otherworldly feel to it. Pictures do not do it justice. The sand is gypsum, rather than silica, which accounts for the whiteness, and also for the coolness of the sand, even on a sunny day. Lot's of people have disc sleds and go sledding on the dunes. I didn't.

I don't know what this purple flower is, but note the lizard to the left...

Adventure Wednesday #1

I have decided that for the rest of the summer, that I am going on a local adventure each Wednesday. I will try to stay within a hundred miles or so of Cloudcroft, so that I can be back to Tiny Trailer by nightfall. 
This week's adventure was to the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. I was impressed by the exhibits, and the 10 year old science nerd in me was delighted. I remember being fascinated by some of these very rockets and missiles when I was a kid.

Exterior of the museum

View from the top floor looking West across Alamogordo...the white horizontal line in front of the mountains in the distance is White Sands National Monument, and the White Sands Testing Range.

Little Joe II, largest missile ever launched at White Sands

Rocket sled

Nike missile...there was a Nike base just north of Denton, now abandoned.

F-1 Rocket engine. 

The most powerful single chamber rocket engine ever made, with about a million and a half pounds of thrust per engine.

Wreckage of V-2 from White Sands, a German capture that White sands personnel were reverse engineering before its crash.

Mercury capsule, like the ones who carried the first Americans into space.

Sputnik, the Russian satellite which first orbited the Earth

Explorer 1, the first American satellite, launched about 4 months after Sputnik

Next Wednesday, another adventure!!

Tall, cool pines...

I arrived at Cool Pines RV campground on May 2nd, dropped off Tiny Trailer, and headed to Amarillo, to see my daughter in a musical. I returned on the 10th, and have been here for a bit over a week, now.
Cool Pines is located on US Hwy 82, about 12 miles east of Cloudcroft, NM. and about 5 miles west of Mayhill, NM.  The sites are spread out over 15 acres, and there are about 37 sites altogether, but are scattered up and down the hillside,...not "parking lot" style at all. My site is about 35 feet wide, and about 30 feet deep, which is dandy for Tiny Trailer, but too short for some of the bigger rigs that are here. 
It's early in the season (they don't open until May 1st), but so far, it seems like a lot of people bring their 5th wheels trailers up here and leave them for the summer, and come up on several weekends. (seems like a poor utilization of resources to me, but it's their money...)
The surroundings are beautiful, and it is indeed, "Cool". Most mornings are in the high 30's to low 40's and the daytime highs are low 60's. Lots of pine and oak forest, and LOTS of hummingbirds. I'll have to get a nectar feeder. There is an activity room, with wifi available , but no good reception up the hill.
It has rained some since I've been here, but not enough to make me whine...yet.
I will be here until mid-September-to maybe the first of October, depending on the weather.

Tiny Trailer in the cool pines...

View down the hill from my campsite

View straight up from the campsite...