After leaving Carlsbad Cavern, I headed off towards White Sands NM. Just outside the caverns, I found a small abandoned (for the winter?) amusement park with go-kart track and miniature golf course. There is something that I just like about abandoned sites, so I couldn't help but stop to take a few pictures and look around.
On the road, I passed a couple of small towns. One had in its town square a monument to those that work the drilling platforms. 
I got out and took a few pics; even one with a sheepishly humored tone. I stopped by a few roadside cemeteries along the way to look at the old tombstones. Several times there were deer to be found along the road that I was able to capture on camera once or twice.
Although it was a long drive, it was fairly pleasant to go through a few small mountain towns and see the really rural areas. Several operated as ski resorts during some of the colder times and I even came across an old train trestle that had a nice setting around it just outside of Cloudcroft.
I made a quick stop in Alamogordo at the Space Museum. Even though it was closed for the day, one could still walk around the grounds for a bit to see various historical artifacts, such as a V-2 rocket from WWII Germany, rocket sleds, and even the burial site for Ham, the first chimp that traveled into space. In the geek world, this town is also known as the Atari burial grounds; the site where millions of unsold copies of the E.T. game were buried. I drove to the actual site that had a placemark listing on Google Earth and it is pretty nondescript since everything is filled in and looks like natural landscape, however I was able to see dozens of rabbits scatter in the headlights. All in all, it was interesting enough and I was able to keep myself quite entertained.
No comments:
Post a Comment