Out west

Yesterday we took a trip up into the "real" mountains and out to White Sands. It took about two hours to get out to the mountains, and then quite a bit of time to get up into them. I think we were actually trying to go highers than we managed. There is a ski resort up there, but naturally it is closed this time of year and so the rest of the road was blocked off. Still, we were up to about 10,000 ft....thats about 6500 ft higher than Carlsbad and a good 10k ft higher than Yorktown :) If it werent for the wonders of aspirin and sudafed and my ears finally deciding to pop it would have been a pretty miserable drive up. I still have problems getting adjusted to higher altitudes but its slowly getting easier for me. I think once my insurance kicks in I'll get my ears checked out and see if the tubes can come out or if they need changing or whatever. Anyhow, it was a really pretty drive up. From the sides you could see clouds slowly rising up the mountain. On our way back down we were actually driving through them. I guess it wasnt really much different than driving through the fog back home, but this was definately a cloud rising and not just a cloud stuck on the ground.

We also made a quick stop in Lincoln. Its pretty much a little historical town whose claim to fame is that Billy the Kid was shot there. Frank says that several old westerns have been filmed in that area. The church that we took a picture of is supposed to be in a few of those movies. There were several small museums that you could go into and some just general old historical buildings...kind of like taking the Yorktown or Jamestown tour where they show you all the super old houses and buildings and such.

After all of that we drove for about another hour out to White Sands. The sand there is completely white and the dunes seem to stretch on forever. The was an Indian wedding going on when we arrived. They had a teepee set up on on of the dunes and an arch with flowers and ribbons around it that the couple was married under. There was a nice view of the mountains in the background, but some parts were kinda hard to see...the light reflects off the sand and makes some areas too bright to see :) From what I read the sand is that shade of white because of some sort of mineral that stays in it. All sand has that mineral, but it is normally washed away by water. There isn't any water near by for the mineral to be washed out with so the sand stays completely white. Or something like that :P White Sands is also right there by a missle range. The whole park and the road going to it gets shut down about twice a week while the base does missile tests. Since theres absolutely nothing out there for them to worry about hitting it makes a good testing ground.