Anyhow, after about an hour in the museum, I snagged some groceries in Roswell, and I headed west towards the New Mexico mountains and the resort community known as Ruidoso.  Although I couldn't see too much at night, Ruidoso reminded me of some of the ski towns out west in Colorado.   Turns out, there is indeed a ski resort nearby called Ski Apache.  I found out later that they didn't have enough snow to open yet, but planned on opening Thanksgiving day.  Using my GPS, Streets 98, and following signs in Lincoln National Forest I found a beautiful campsite among the snow at approximately 9000 feet.  This was the Skyline campsite with a nice view of the town below.

November 11th - I awoke to the rumble of a number of cars passing by the campsite... When I got out of my "bed", I noticed a number of hunters roaming around in the woods near parking spot.  Good thing I was in my car!  Actually, the few hunters I did see seemed nice enough.  After a quick breakfast, I headed back down to Ruidoso.   My feelings were verified about the town.  Very nice little community with lots of condos.  Reminded me a little of Aspen Colorado,but not quite as nice. 

At this point in my trip, I decided to try put my book, Manifold Destiny, to good use.  My old boss at Sterling Commerce gave me this book.  Believe it is or not, it was a cooking book about how to cook a meal on your exhaust manifold in your engine.  During my drive through Mescalero (in the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation), I had a potato (wrapped 3 times in a aluminum foil), stting on top of my exhaust manifold.  After about an hour, I was in Alamogordo and to my horror, discovered that my car has excellent ventilation under the hood.  The potato was as raw as could be.  I think that without building some kind of contraption to hinder airflow around the exhaust manifold, I am doomed to bake in an actual oven.  Oh well,   I tried Don!  who knows, I might try to build a little oven to trap air near the manifold in the future!

Anyhow, I arrived in Alamogordo and tried to find a place where I could update my web pages.  I tried the library there, and after about 3 hours futzing around, I figured out that the computers there didn't have the ability to upload pages.  They had some pretty good security on those things unfortunately.  My web page update would have to wait.  So off I went to White Sands National Monument. 

After arriving, I checked in at the visitor's center.  As I drove into the park, I noticed that my morale was dropping.  It took me a while to figure out that one of the reasons my morale was dropping was because I wasn't feeding my self properly.   I recalled that I used to have a small problem with hypocglycemia (low blood sugar).  After entering the park, I pulled over at a picnic site and had a nice big lunch/dinner.  I felt 100 % better and headed off into the white sands.  I got some really incredible shots in White Sands.  The White Sands are truly a site to see.  In many ways, it reminded me of the Sahara desert, but with white sand.   Absolutely stark white sand... and nothing but sand... there were a few (very few) plants. 

The white sands came from from crystals that eventually weathered themselves down into sand.  The crystals formed on the edges of lakes.  As the lake level would rise and fall, deposits of gypsum were left on the shore, forming these crystals.   These lakes were rich in gypsum because the waters from the mountains above the desert floor had cut into the earth exposing gypsum.  The gypsum eventually made its way down, via the water runoff, and into the lake.  The Dunes at white sands were formed by the wind.  During windy days, grains of sand glow around thereby moving the dunes.  It is said that dunes can move as much as 40 feet in a year.  The dunes swallow just about everything in its path.  Therefore, the plants that do live there have adapted in very unique ways.  For example, some of the grasses and low lying plants put down deep roots, holding on tightly to the sandy gypsum rich sand.  This forms grass islands that seem to defy the rules gravity and erosion.  The soaptree yucca is one of the most interesting plants.  As the dune begins to overtake a plant, the yucca shoots up its leaves in an attempt to stay above the dune.  If/when the dune moves on, it exposes the lower, weaker half of the plant that was built up in hast to stay above the dune.  The plant usually collapses under its own weight at this time.   Very strange!

After the white sands, I headed back into Alamogordo to figure out where to go next.  I found a $1 shower at the Family Center in Downtown Alamogordo.  After the show, I called my friend Dave in Dallas to see when/if I might be able to visit him.   Turned out the best time was Friday evening-Saturday afternoon.  Sunday was going to be busy for him.  I had made plans to see my friend Wade in Houston on Sunday-Tuesday.  Yikes, it was already Thursday!  I decided to head towards Dallas.  I went through El Paso and headed off to Hueco Tanks State Park in hope of camping there for the night and seeing some of the petroglyphs the next day.  I had heard good things about Hueco Tanks... unfortunately, when I got there, I found the gate closed (and locked!)  So much for seeing Hueco Tanks!  I actually had to drive nearly back into El Paso to hit the interstate.  I wasn't sure what I was going to do for finding a place to sleep for the evening.  However, along the interstate, I found busy, 24 hour truckstop.  This would be my first night in a truckstop and I felt a little nervous about sleeping there.  However, sleep came quickly and everything worked out really well.  I felt I now had another option for places I could stay while on the road.

November 12th - I headed out on the road and hit a rest stop for breakfast.   There isn't much to note on this day... just a long drive into Dallas.  I did stop at the Odessa Meteor Crater.  My friend Eric told me about the crater, but couldn't find it on any maps.  I was pretty surprised when I passed Meteor Crater road with signs for "Meteor Crator".  The reason I couldn't find it is because it's official name is "The Odessa Meteor Crater".  I swear I took some pictures there, but my digital camera didn't keep them for some reason.  It really isn't very impressive to look at until you read some of the signs that describe what you are looking at.  The Meteor Crater was 100' deep after impact.  It is currently only 6'-10' deep.  The most notable thing about it was the uplifted limestone.  The limestone is usually 50' below surface out there on the dessert floor, but the meteor impact essentially pushed the limestone up towards the surface.   It may sound more interesting than it looked though... there was a only a slight elevation difference between the desert and the floor of the crater, and the rocks were only a few feet above the dessert soil. 

After the crater I continued towards Dallas and arrived around 9pm at Dave's (and wife Heather's) house.  Dave was a good friend in college... my study partner at Washington University for Sophmore and Junior year.  We both struggled through a number of CS and EE classes together.  I hadn't seen him in nearly 3 and a half years and it was really good to catch up with him.  We stayed up late and reminisced about the old times.

November 13th - The next day, I awoke and we decided to take a quick ride on the greenway near his home.  Dallas appears to have a number of multipurpose trails throughout the city... something Atlanta could use a LOT more of!  Dave rollerbladed and I biked and we had a pretty good ride/skate.  Dave had family coming in, so after the ride, I took a quick shower and headed out.  Bad weather was coming in and I wanted to get to destination for the night at a decent hour... I arrived at Huntsville around 9pm or so.  It was dark, but I managed to find a nice campsite on the lake as the skies opened up and the rain began to fall.

November 14th - Finally a day off!  I did basicaly nothing this day!   After waking up, I relaxed and read my book by the lake.  I also took a short walk on their interpretive path.  It was kind of humorous actually.  They had a pine tree labelled as a sassafrass tree... hmmm.   I made myself lunch at a picnic spot while I observed some crows attack a bird of prey that was invading there territory.  I got to see a number of animals... turtles in lake, squirrel, and armadillo. 

At around 4pm I headed out to Houston to visit my friend Wade.  Once I arrived, Wade was nowhere to be found.  Thank goodness he had left a key to get into his place!  Once I got in, I got a call from him saying that he had missed his flight.  After arriving at the airport, he realized that he didn't have his keys with him and they had to turn around.  He told me that he would be out on the next flight.   I was still up when he arrived around 1am.

November 15th - We woke up at a decent hour and Wade called in sick (he did actually have some stomach problems!).  But that didn't stop us to heading off to Padre Island National Seashore to try to see if we could catch some fish.  It was a long 4 hour drive, but we decided Padre Island would be worth it.  Even though Wade had to be back at work the following day.  Upon arriving (around 3pm) we checked out the visitor's center.  It turns out that Padre Island is pretty big and all of it is accessible by car.  It's a 60 mile drive from one end to the other and 4WD is required.  We decided hit the nature trail to see what kind of flora and fauna grew along the beach while we still had sunlight.  At first I thought it was a pretty lame nature trail.  Afterwards, I discovered that we had forgotten to get the interpretive brochure.  Ooops.  Oh well.  We had to head off to the beach if we wanted to start fishing before sunset.  We drove down the beach and found a spot away from everyone else.  After catching some bait (smaller fish) with a castnet, we threw our lines out and started fishing.  Unfortunately, we came up emtpy handed before the sun set and had to settle for a  pasta dinner (which was still pretty darn good!)   We watched the stars for a bit.  There was supposed to be a really impressive meteor shower over the next couple of days and we were rewarded with views of a couple of shooting stars.  The lights of Corpus Christi didn't really affect the view.   Wade lit up his cigar and I light up my pipe and we had some great conversation as we basked in the beauty of the beach night.  Around 10 or 11pm, we headed back to Houston.  We arrived back in Houston around 3am and crashed immediately.

November 16th - Another relaxing day.  Wade went into work and I decided to do some laundry.  Wade came home for lunch and we went out to hit a great mexican restaurant.  Afterwards we ran some errands.  I bought a book on the Perl programming language so I could try to do some fancy stuff with my web pages (keep your eyes peeled for some enhanced functionality!). Wade headed back into work and I started reading about Perl.  I immediately fell into a stupor (technical books seem to do that to you) and took a nice long nap.  Before I knew it, Wade was baning on the door and off we went for coffee and dinner.  Wade is a really good friend from my high school days and it was wonderful to spend some quality time like this together.  We talked about everything during the course of the weekend.  It will be wonderful to spend more time with him when he makes it back to Atlanta (which should be soon).

November 17th - Long ass drive!  Nothing really to note here.  I stopped only 3 times for gas... that's IT!  Other than that, I was driving the entire time... 9am (CST) to 11pm (EST) when I arrived at home.  Whew!

Welcome to Roswell, New Mexico

The Alien and I at the UFO Museum, Roswell, New Mexico

Ruidoso New Mexico, Skyline Campsite, Lincoln National Forest

Failed attempt to bake a potato on the engine

Grass Islands in the White Sands

Incredible Clouds, Dune View

1" deep reflection pool, dunes, and mountains

Wade on Padre Island grasslands/dunes

Wade and myself on Padre Island