Right now we are in a town in southern NM called Ruidoso. It is really nice and the closest thing to an american town we have seen all week. There are even other white people!!! It is a ski town like aspen and the weather is nice at 6900' .... Yesterday we toured the Very Large Array. It can be seen in movies such as "Contact" and "Independence Day". It was super geeky and a lot of fun for me. Lauren humored me and faked excitement looking at Giant (and I mean giant) steel dishes in the desert. They were about 100 feet in diameter and there were about 30 of them mounted on a 3 axis railroad system. Each arm of the railroad went 13 miles into the desert. The dishes move on the railroad so they can focus the radio telescope. It was fun to see their labs and operations and read about it. Tour was free and a lot of fun. Lauren enjoyed seeing the lizards and jackrabbits. After that we drove south into some really shady area and went to a town called truth or consequences. It was a totally mexican town. We bought gas and continued to Hatch, NM. This is a little speck of nothing town that happens to be the chile capital of the world. We went to a restaurant run by a family of sisters that make the best stuff in town. I knew about "the pepper pot" restaurant because it was shown on anthony bourdains show "no reservations"....... The town hasn't lost any charm to tourism. There aren't any tourists here. Everyone knew everyone else in the restaurant completely and totally. We felt a little out of place because we didn't know everyone in the place to say hi to when we walked in. We were also the only people who didn't order iced tea (out of about 20 people in the place). The journey didn't end there!!!! Last night we continued on south to white sands missile range and test facility. We took some great pics and went hiking barefoot on the white sand dunes. It was an amazing experience driving and playing in the dunes. The thermometer peaked at the hottest part of the trip so far right before we went hiking..... it was 107 degrees!
I was sweaty
and so was lauren
White sands was a lot like the badlands. I actually think I liked it better. It was a lot like a weird bleached out version of boars tusk dunes.
the really crazy stuff that you probably want to hear about was from a few days ago. Laur and I camped in a rocky BLM area away from the world. We went on about an hour hike before dusk and on the way back I stepped over a rock and the biggest spider i've ever seen outside of the zoo was right in front of me. It scattered and looked for a second like it was gonna run up my leg but instead just backed up and looked at me. It was crazy. I would guess it was 5-6" in diameter. I could hear each leg click as it walked over the rocks. Then we went back to camp...watched a beautifull sunset and as laur was getting ready to take a shower we both screamed "OUCH!!!! SOMETHING STUNG ME!!!! in unison. Kinda funny but also sucked. I turned on the flashlight and there were hundreds and hundreds of fire ants all around us in attack mode. My chair and the van were set up right on top of an ant hole and they dont come out till sundown. The sting hurt bad enough neither of us could go to sleep for about 4 hours. In the morning we packed up and high tailed it out of there.... on the way out there was about a 3 foot diamondback rattler that looked like it was dead on the road. It was laying flat on a tire track. When I got out to look at it ... it wasn't dead. It was alive. First time I've seen a lot of these things. We asked one of the locals about the tarantula. She said she had seen them walking across the highway before but never been up close to one. I guess they are sorta rare.
Our only other exciting experience was going to the hippy dips and hiking around Jemez. We ran into some nudists and it was funny.
AS always ... continuing to meet cool and exciting people everywhere we go. Having fun.
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