Day 3, From Smoky Bear to Space Travel and White Sands

One of the best things about taking a road trip is seeing all of the different towns in a region. Some towns just seem tired, like Roswell. Other towns have responded to hypertourism, such as Ruidoso’s response to the ski traffic. Our favorite town today, however, was Capitan, this little tiny town dedicated to Smokey Bear. To be honest, although I remember the slogan {Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires}, I had no clue that there was actually a real live bear named Smokey until I was flipping through our slightly annoying guidebook [1].

Capitan Mountains, New Mexico

After a little debate {Do we have the time? Is it worth going an hour out of the way?}, we crammed all our stuff back into the car and headed to the historical museum. Along the way, we drove through Billy the Kid country, stopped at an overlook where the injured cub that would become Smokey Bear was found following a forest fire, and got to the museum. We watched a short film and looked over the exhibits, which included Smokey’s harness from when he was only 5 pounds, a description of the various government propaganda campaigns, and a discussion of various forest fighting techniques. We also wandered out into the cold to see Smokey’s grave.

We spent about an hour at the museum and then, taking the advice of the docent at the museum, took a little state route that wasn’t on our atlas to get to Alamogordo. I’m sure this route saved us some time, but there was still some ice on the road where the mountain shade kept the sun from reaching the pavement. Poor Sally – she just don’t handle that well on the ice, but she was loaded down with all of our crap so she gripped the road pretty well. Plus, it was worth it – this particular approach allowed us to see the White Sands gypsum field shimmering in the distance.

We pulled into Alamogordo and headed up to the New Mexico Museum of Space History. It wasn’t that hard to find: a big shiny box of a building gleaming on the mountainside with missiles out front. We paid our admission fee, rode the elevator to the fourth floor and started to work our way through the various exhibits. Rockets! Satellites! Spacesuits! Bad kids!

Uh, yeah. Bad kids.

We were on a mezzanine between the fourth and third floors when these four screaming children went racing through, shouting at the top of their lungs. They swooped past me – three tiny girls and a little boy in a weird hat —  headed for a lower floor. A few minutes went by when their mother {Aunt? Nanny? Other Authorized Female?} wandered in, looking for them. I pointed her down the ramp, although I don’t know why she didn’t follow all the noise they were making [2].

Don’t people understand the concept of age-appropriate?

We spent about two hours wandering through the museum, but I wish we had more time. We didn’t get a chance to go out to the Daisy Track exhibit and we didn’t get to look at the missiles and rockets outside. Even though we were eager to get to White Sands, we did look around for the grave of HAM, the astrochimp; we found it up near the driveway entrance to the museum, complete with a faded plastic banana on top of the plaque.

Picnic Shelter
White Sands National Monument, New Mexico

We headed out of Alamogordo towards White Sands National Monument, thinking that we’d have a picnic in the park. After all, our guidebook had pictures of these really neat looking picnic shelters. Alas, our timing was impeccably bad – two buses full of Japanese tourists were crammed into the visitors’ center. We waded through all the people to get a stamp in our NPS Passport, bought some souvenirs, and watched the video, which I can only describe as lame [3].

Stopping for that passport stamp was a big mistake. By the time we came back out, the line of cars trying to enter Dunes Drive was stretched out onto the main road. A park ranger was directing traffic, trying to clear the main road. Yep, we were stuck in the parking lot for a long, long time. When we finally made it into the queue, it still took forever to get to the entry gate. So long, in fact, that the little boy in the car in front of us actually had to pee on the side of the road!

The White Sands are a lot like the White Cliffs of Dover – nowhere near as white as one would expect. For the record, it could be that the sands seem whiter in the summer when they aren’t all damp from the melting snow. In addition, I’ll admit to the fact that I was slightly annoyed by all of the people who were crammed into the place, sledding and shouting and standing in all of my pictures. Again, this was probably a problem of timing – Sunday afternoon, Christmas break, nice afternoon. I was also in a bad mood because The Coach is a horrible photographer [4] and it took him at least 20 shots to get a decent picture of me.

When the sun started to go down, we headed out of the park – feeling slightly disoriented driving around the dunes on the unpaved road. That reminds me: Poor Sally needs a shower. We finally found the main road and headed over to Las Cruces to spend the night. Along the way, we noticed a checkpoint, but didn’t really know what it was. Maybe, we thought, they were closing the road for a missile test? [5]

We finished out night by eating at Nopalito, i.e., the little cactus, a restaurant that we found on the Roadfood website. OH MY GOD – it was so yummy. I ordered this combination platter that included a lovely green chili stew and tasty chili rellenos with this awesome green sauce. I’m not really sure what The Coach had because I was too busy scarfing down my meal — seeing how we never did get our picnic at White Sands. Stuffed to the gills, we went to the hotel, passing a gas station that had gas listed at $1.13 a gallon, and crashed for the night.

Footnotes:

1. The Moon Handbook to New Mexico is slightly obnoxious. The chick who wrote really seems to have a negative attitude. Unfortunately, it was the only New Mexico book that I could find in Sorta’ Cosmopolitan.
2. I want to point out that I like kids. Really, I do. Plus, there were other kids in that museum, even younger than the little shits running through the place, who were really well behaved. The difference? Their parents were actually talking to them about the exhibits and trying to teach them something!
3. The last time I saw a NPS video this lame was at the Petrified Forest!
4. I think I need to buy him an easier camera to use.
5. Uh, no. Actually, it was the Border Patrol … but more on that later.