New Mexico Extravaganza - Alamagordo Adventures and 70/70 Quest #s 29-32!

 70/70 Quest #29: Heart of the Desert Pistachio Farm

Imagine our surprise when we discovered that our campground in Alamagordo was practically across the street from a pistachio farm. Who knew that Alamagordo was a pistachio-growing mecca? Not only were we able to sample bunches of pistachios and buy bunches of pistachios, we were able to see bunches of pistachios growing on trees in the pistachio orchard (and, yes, pistachios grow in bunches!). The Heart of the Desert Pistachio Farm on Eagle Ranch, is New Mexico’s first and largest (13,000 trees!) pistachio grove. Fresh pistachios! Exquisite!

 

 

 70/70 Quest #30: White Sands National Park

White Sands – dazzling white sands – cover 275 square miles of the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest gypsum dune field in the world. The Park preserves more than half of this dune field. There are warnings everywhere about carrying water and taking precautions to not get lost if exploring the dunes. Fortunately, there are three well-marked fairly short trails that we were able to comfortably explore. I considered venturing out on a 5-mile trail but thought better of it since it would have been a solo adventure across the vast sands. As it was, the three shorter trails that Kendall, Taz and I traversed provided lots to see and plenty of information about what we were seeing.

Taking off to find the next trail marker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kendall sends a birthday wave to his brother, Andy

 

Taz finds the only shade!

 

The remarkable soaptree yucca, growing up and down depending on the depth of the sand.
An extraordinarily useful plant: young flowers rich in Vitamin C, flower pods boiled or roasted like a potato,
leaf fibers used to make rope, sandals, baskets, etc., and roots chopped & boiled to make soap!

One sees the most surprising sights in National Parks!

 

70/70 Quest #31: New Mexico Museum of Space History

Quoting from their website: “Dedicated October 5, 1976, as the International Space Hall of Fame, the New Mexico Museum of Space History’s mission is to inspire and educate, to promote and preserve, and to honor the pioneers of space exploration.” And, oh my goodness, do they do a good job of achieving their mission. The amount of information – historical, technical, cultural – presented in the museum through text, artifacts, and a wide variety of exhibits (inside and outside) is phenomenal.

A few photos of a very small sampling of what can be found in this museum:

Kendall wants a faster ride

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

F1 Rocket Engine

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

A chance to find out what it feels like to blast off from inside a rocket!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friden Calculator - used to by mathematicians to double check their
hand calculations of thrust, rate of combustion, and velocity.
(Read about it in Hidden Figures)

"...have you tried turning it off and on?" Advice that has stood the test of time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glimpse into the future - Star Trek Transporter Room

 

...then, to complete the visit: walking into the bathroom...

 

70/70 Quest #32: Space Murals Museum

This museum refers to itself as a "people's museum" - filled with donated artifacts from the space program along with photographs and newspaper/magazine articles. The "Murals" portion of the museum are found on a 1.2 million gallon water tank that stands outside the museum building. The murals depict the U.S. Space program from its beginning until the Challenger accident. We discovered this museum as we drove south from Alamagordo - definitely a worthy stop!