Day 3 - New Mexico

I scouted the Very Large Array location, last night. Therefore this morning it was an easy drive to the location. I have to look up the exact dimensions but the dishes have a diameter of 25 meter. This half year they are all I the D-configuration. Unofficial that stands for Darn close. What I didn't know was that they move quite quickly. At 8am the visitor center opened and I could get some shots closer to the VLA. But when I got there they were all in an unfavorable position I.e. a lot of shade. When I was thinking about what to do with the situation, one of the operators came out to smoke a cigarette and told me they would rotate in about 15 minutes.

On my way to the state park City of Rocks, I realized that New Mexico has a, even lower population density that Texas. I drove for over an hour without spotting a house or gas station.

Day 2 - New Mexico

After yesterday's drive through Texas, I decided to sleep in this morning. My first stop was 'White Sands NP'. The National Park is located in the middle of a missile test range. Luckily no tests today, otherwise the park would be closed. The dunes in the park are actually not sand dunes but gypsum. You might wonder why the rain didn't take away the gypsum over the centuries, that is because the dunes are in a basin. There is no way out for the water.

The next stop was Cloudcroft. This village is on top of a mountain but is not much special besides all the tourist shops.

The last stop for today was the Very Large Array (VLA). Sunset wasn't really special because of the cloudy skies. At least I knew my way around for sunset.

Everything is bigger in Texas.

I spend most of my first vacation day behind the wheel, driving from Houston to El Paso. After 1 bottle of water, 2 coffee, 2 hamburgers meals,  4 stops for gas, 6 granola bars, 12 hours of driving (and stopping to take 106 photos), 28 gallons of gas, 722 miles ............ and I'm still in Texas. El Paso is in a different time zone though, i.e. Mountain time.

For the Europeans that is about 106 liters of gas for 1228 kilometers. I don't think I will get the Al Gore award for this vacation.

My gps logger says that my average speed from my apartment to my hotel room was 53 mph. That's not to bad given the stops I made. No, I didn't break the speed limit. Shortly after San Antonio the speed limit is raised to 80 mph. I was surprised to see that s the fuel consumption increased about 20-25% just by increasing the speed from 70 mph to 80 mph.