Jan 19-24 Southeast Arizona and Video link

Here is a link to a video of Washington DC, Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

Jan 19 - we head out of New Mexico through pecan groves, cotton fields, and farmlands to McNeal, AZ.  Whitewater Draw Conservation Area is home to 35,000 sandhill cranes during the winter months.  What a sight to see - flocks of large gray cranes, the mature ones with white cheeks and red faces.  The cranes spend the day on the farmlands and then return to the water in the afternoon in flocks of hundreds.  We are able to camp overnight and listen to the soft trilling and cooing of the cranes during the night.

Jan 20 - Beautiful sunny day up to 21 degrees and we head to Tombstone, a national historic old west town.  It is very touristy with stagecoach and wagon tours.  There are lots of gunfight/shootout tours to visit, but nothing is free (unlike those in Deadwood and Cody that we saw last year).  Tombstone is the site of the OK Corral shootout with Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Halliday versus three outlaws.  We visit the Boothill Graveyard - well worth the $3 admission each.  Here lie the three outlaws from the OK Corral.   The best epitaph in the cemetery - Here lies Lester Moore/4 slugs from a 44/ no Les no more.

Jan 21 - Near Benson, we visit Kartchner Caverns for a super informative tour of the gorgeous caverns.  These caverns are quite new to the public, opening in 1999 and 2003.  Carlsbad Caverns were closed in New Mexico so this was the next best thing.

In the afternoon, we visit the Titan Missile Museum in Sahuarita.  We take a 1-hour tour of the underground facility and see the huge 103-foot decommissioned Titan II missile in its underground silo.  Very scary to think about how close we all might have been to a nuclear war.

Jan 22-23
Mission San Xavier del Bac is called the White Dove of the Desert.  Founded by Jesuits in 1700, the dazzling white towers and dome rise from the desert.  It is well preserved, beautiful, and still active.

We find a small piece of BLM land (Snyder Hill) to boondock near Tucson - a desert strip amidst surrounding neighborhoods.  We count about 55 rigs out here with us!  The weather is still near freezing at night, but the sunny days go up to as high as 20 degrees. 

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Jan 15-19 New Mexico

Southern New Mexico is very much like Texas.  We have seen lots of oilfields and lots of desert scrubland.  It is windy as well and freezing at nighttime, so our stay is brief and just in the south.

Jan 15 - We are very disappointed that the Carlsbad Caverns National Park is closed due to the ongoing USA budget fight. We press on north through pecan and pistachio groves and desert to Roswell to visit the UFO museum here.  Cheap $2 entry shows us a lot of exhibits, grainy photos, and witness accounts, etc., but no firm evidence.  In 1947 something crashed on a rancher's land that the military removed.  Alien beings were rumored to be in the crash, which the military explained as a "weather balloon."  The truth is still out there...

We also visit the Roswell Museum and Art Center.  Besides artworks, there is a large exhibit on Dr. Goddart and his rocket research/workshop dating to his last rocket launch in 1942.  He had an amazing collection of patents and rockets, but was not well regarded in the US until years after his death when Germans reverse-engineered and improved his designs.

Jan 16 - We head north to the Museums of Lincoln.  One of the most authentic western towns remaining in the US, this is the spot where Billy the Kid practiced his outlaw ways, killing townspeople, escaping custody, and then being shot dead himself.  Today, the town is very quiet, with a single street passing through and many original buildings still standing.

Jan 17 - There is snow on the ground at Ruidoso, so we head south past snow-covered Sierra Blanca Peak (12,000 feet).  Our first stop is White Sands National Park which is closed as well due to a lack of funding.  Another disappointment, but we get a few photos from the road of the vast white gypsum dunes.

 
Fortunately, we are able to visit the White Sands Missile Test Center Museum as it is operated by the military and not the government.  We agree to only photograph inside the museum and "in the west direction" when at the rocket/missile park outside.  White Sands has been used to test rockets, missiles, aircraft, optical equipment, and radars since 1945 for the arm, air force, and NASA.

Jan 18/19 - As we head west near the Mexico border, we overnight at the City of Rocks State Park.  In the middle of nowhere/desert nothingness, we find two large clusters of rounded volcanic towers rising up out of the scrubland.  This area looks true to its name - like a city of rocks and very cool.  We enjoy hiking among the rocks and seeing the tent campsites nestled among the rocks - an awesome campground!

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