Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

The bad news of our visit was that it was cold and windy. The good news was the surreal beauty of the setting with these varnished rocks set on a small hill on the plains with a mountain background. It really is in the middle of nowhere.

The site has over 21,000 recorded petroglyphs (wow!) made from 1000-1400 CE. We’ve seen a lot of petroglyphs before but many of these seemed more ornate or complicated.This bighorn sheep has 3 arrows piercing it's body.

Or some seemed just fanciful and would fit on a cartoon.

Visitors are allowed to crawl over the rocks on or off the path. We’ve been to sites that required binoculars to see the petroglyphs, so this was nice to be up close and personal. A bald eagle on the left?

Of course, no one really knows what the purpose of these glyphs really is or what some of them are supposed to show.  I think this was is a hand grabbing a snake. BTW, there are all kinds of warnings about snakes being among the rocks but given the cold temperatures we didn’t see any.

In honor of Christmas, I think this is a reindeer.

And this is someone trimming a Christmas tree.

 On the way back to the campground we had to stop at the world’s largest pistachio and buy some nuts.

Alamogordo

Today was still windy. We could see the sand storms over at White Sands. The funny part was that we went to see Fantastic Beasts. In it there is a beast that is a dark amorphous wind. When we stepped outside the cinema, the skies were dark and swirling with high winds. Scary!

The Museum of Space History is in town. There is a lot of local history in rocketry and space with the White Sands Missile Range nearby. We had fun crashing the shuttle and experiencing the sound and vibrations of take-off in simulations. Even the elevator is cool!

The museum has a moon rock, the gravesite of Ham the 1^st astrochimp, and cans from Skylab. BTW, John worked at Central States Can when they made the EZ-Open lids used in space.

Gene Roddenberry was in the most recent International Space Hall of Fame class. There is a major section on Star Trek.

White Sands

We were at White Sands Monument before, but I forget how annoying the sand can be. The last time it was windy, but this time it seemed more. You could see a cloud of sand rising from the ground for miles. It was like walking in a blizzard at times with sand blowing into your eyes. After our visit, we had to empty shoes, pockets, and brush down all our clothes.

I tried walking barefoot on the boardwalk again and had fun getting zapped with static electricity plus being embarrassing (no one else was barefoot).

Many people buy a sled to use on the dunes.

We just climbed the hills and experienced the wind.

And a sand angel!

Billy the Kid

After all these canyons, I guess we went the opposite direction. Lake Sumner  in New Mexico is basically a plain. Here’s the view from the campground.

Here’s the dam that was completed in 1937.

We’ve been seeing prickly pear cactus and now the cholla cactus has shown up. I watched a herd of 7 mule deer eating this cactus.

We spent Thanksgiving here. We were also able to get a couple of shipments at the local post office. Buying gifts on the internet is much more difficult when you are moving around all the time!

Fort Sumner is known as the place that Billy the Kid was killed back in 1881. Sheriff Pat Garrett found him here after he escaped from prison. Billy (or William H. Bonney) was only 21 years old but had already killed eight men. His grave is outside the town where he was buried with 2 friends who died a few months earlier. The interesting part here is that the smaller gravestone was made in 1940, stolen in 1950, recovered in 1976, stolen again and recovered in 1981. Now it is in two cages to keep it here.

In town is the Billy the Kid Museum. This museum is amazing! It is only $5 per person but has room after room of items (an estimated 60,000). The museum is one family’s work with lots of donations and opened in 1953. The stuff is amazing. There are several pieces that are directly related to Billy the Kid like his spurs and his rifle.

There is stuff that is sort of related like a picture of two guys whose grandfathers were pallbearers at Billy’s funeral or pots that cooked food that Billy ate.

There are also rooms of stuff like fossils and arrowheads and from the 1800’s to roughly the 1950’s. I liked this funeral carriage and this jail cell.

Palo Duro

Palo Duro State Park in Texas is a great park for hiking. The canyon is the 2^nd largest in the country. There are 6 different camping areas. The campground we were in recently opened and it has fabulous views. We believe we were the 2^nd group to stay in the site. Very cool! The campground had turkey visiting along with several road runners. The road runners were less skittish than most. While we were washing windows, one came up within 5 feet of us…at which point I started wondering whether they can be dangerous.

I saw several flocks of turkeys on my hikes.

It was funny to see the groups of people hiking. In one case we had a sorority of girls hiking up the hill behind us. It definitely pushed us to go faster than normal. On another hike there was a group of ROTC students hiking the trail. As I passed, each yelled at the person behind him to “move to your right”. OK, it was polite but weird to have a group yelling this over and over.

My favorite hike here is the Givens, Spicer, Lowry trail. The views and rock formations are really amazing!

There is no cell phone service in the whole canyon. Given that the campground is a 20 minute drive from the entrance and up a steep road that meant no calls or internet for 5 days except when we hiked up Rock Garden trail which is a 2.5 mile hike to the top. Again, the views are incredible. We heard a guy that made a call at the top and left a message on voice mail, “Well, I hiked 2 hours to make this call and you’re not there.” To make it more interesting for us it started to sprinkle on the way down. It made us hike that much faster.

Some of the rocks in the ‘garden’ look like cow pies.

Views from another hike. On the last one, you can see the lighthouse formation along with a silhouette of a deer.

Our last morning was interesting. When I was in cell phone service, I found out I had a business meeting that morning. So I drove 30 minutes to the nearest Walmart and called in. The RV followed later. Whatever works!