Day 17 Thursday January 29, 2009

We have been threatening to go see White Sands National Monument all week and today was the day. We headed NE on USH 70 through the Organ Mountains and before long we saw a sign that invited us to come to the White Sands Missile Range Museum. So we took a detour to the base; their museum is right by the gate to the base, so you just had to show some ID to get to the museum. They had a building there with a German V2 Rocket from WWII. It was one that had been seized by Allied troops at the end of the war; the parts were shipped to New Mexico and assembled here. The displays included variations of all the famous rocket names, Redstone, Titan, Hercules, Nike, etc.. (http://www.wsmr-history.org/MissilePark.htm). I was surprised by all the little missles that were on display some as small as 4 inches in diameter and maybe only 3 or 4 feet long.
We spent a couple hours there and then headed another 40 miles toward Alamagordo to the White Sands National Monument. The white sands are natural gypsum that washes down
from the nearby mountains and collects in the basin between the mountains since there is no exterior drainage from this area. The wind distributes the sand from the basins (playas) and now cover about 275 square miles. Life appears pretty sparse in the drifting sands areas but there are birds and insects and a few rodents but not a whole lot of plants. I was surprised by the number of picnic sites that were at the park; didn't look like much of a picnic spot to me!
Since this was a National Park, Cathey was able to get her Senior Citizen discount card which gives us a discount at all National Parks and National Forest facilities. Then we drove on into Alamagordo to celebrate at a Chili's restaurant!