'Hale-bent' for Missouri 2011 travel blog

These are the reindeer kids that I made for grandkids. They are...

I made them for Christian and Faith & they get squished together...

I love the name of this restaurant that we stopped into for...

For those of you in the "backseat" this is the view as...

We are just entering White Sands missile range.

The only "missile" we see is a 45 ft. Essex motorhome with...

I'm just a little nervous, hoping that some "heat-seeking" device does not...

We were told that this route offers no scenery to enjoy...just wide...

Now I know why this area is called "White Sands Missile Range"...

The New Mexico Border Patrol...doing its' job!

We finally come upon different scenery in the form of a distant...

We are headed straight up and through those mountains.

There is a concrete home nestled right in the middle of this...

I loved the scene of this church and cross at the crest...

We came upon another beautiful church as we reached higher altitudes.

It is amazing how drastically the vegetation changed throughout our 5 hour...

We reached the peak at about 7,000 ft.

Looks like the Indians are still trying to "scalp" us...but certainly not...

So much animal life along the way, peacefully grazing the pastures.

Nearing Roswell the scenery looks almost lunar-like. No wonder the spaceship crashed,...

Nestled in for the night at Bottomless Lake State Park.

Our whole campsite was surrounded by these hills of salt and gypsum...

We were beachfront on Lea Lake at the Bottomless Lakes State Park...

Can you see the lone hiker at the top of the mountain...

It was 90 degrees when we arrived so I immediately changed into...

Looks like those early morning workouts are paying off! It was so...

Just beyond the docks is the public beach and you could hear...

This was my view from the door of our motorhome!

This park has facilities for RV's as well as tent campers right...

We cooked our dinner under the pavillion each night.


Today we are setting our sights on Roswell, New Mexico the site of the UFO Museum & Research Center. Usually we travel the southern route through New Mexico but for something different we decided to visit the Roswell site and Museum. As we set out, it is May 21st, the predicted last day on earth...the end of the world...to happen at approximately 6:00 p.m. Our friend Pam emailed a message stating that if we should happen to disappear on this date, she wouldn't know if we had been taken to heaven or kidnapped by extraterrestrials!!! Our route took us through White Sands Missile Range where on July 16, 1945 the explosion of the first atomic bomb took place. It is a desolate, barren landscape which makes for a rather eerie drive. This is also known as White Sands National Monument which is one of the natural wonders -the glistening white sands of New Mexico. It covers 275 square miles of desert and is known as the largest gypsum dune field. We went from the flat lands of the Tularosa Basin to the top of the San Andres mountains at an approx. altitude of 7,000 ft. We found shelter for the night at the Bottomless Lakes State Park. It was assumed the lake had no bottom after a group of cowboys lowered their saddles, tied to a rope, into the lake and could not find the bottom. Now it is known that the bottom ranges from 17 ft. at its' shallows to 90 ft. at its' deepest. The lake is a mixture of salt and gypsum formed when underground caverns filled with water and collapsed forming the group of lakes in the area. Doug swam in the lake and found it cold but very refreshing!

Tomorrow we tour the UFO Museum and scout for aliens...(the outerspace variety!)


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