2017 Road Trip, Day 2: Alamogordo, NM

New Mexico Museum of Space History

Our original plan was to drive through El Paso and see the Border Patrol Museum — which, if you look their website, seems to be pretty campy and is rumored (by them) to be "one of our Nation’s best kept secrets."  However, the museum was closed on Mondays, so we went through Alamogordo instead.

Our alternate route brought us to the New Mexico Museum of Space History instead, and three flags waving proudly in the wind.

If you've never crouched down on the sidewalk while your significant other walks in circles around you, sighing impatiently as you try repeatedly for the perfect shot, you cannot truly appreciate the effort that went into this photograph.

Don't worry - my DH got over his grumpiness when he got to explore space junk!

2017 Road Trip: Day One, Mesilla NM Cont.

 

These images seem twinned to me, somehow. It's not just the visual similarity of two slender white vertical objects; it's also that I took the two photos one after the other without remembering the prayerful figure from the previous shot  When I loaded the photos into Aperture and saw them for the first time side by side, they just resonated.  Our subconscious minds are sometimes wiser than we know!

Downtown Mesilla is really lovely, BTW.  After wandering through the streets and shops, we had a great dinner at La Posta, which Google describes as a "New Mexican restaurant in an 18th century stagecoach station also features a piranha tank & aviary."  I loved the food - best Mexican cole slaw ever! - but of course the macaws, cockatoo and Amazon parrots stole my heart.

2017 Road Trip: Day One, Mesilla, NM

The old church in Mesilla is supposed to be one of those must-stop destinations for tourists, but we found the doors locked.  We wandered around outside dutifully, and I got some nice shots, but it was actually rather depressing, with all the memorials for those lost in war, and the little memorial for those lost to abortion.

We knew it would be a long day of driving, which it was.  I think that sometimes I want to make New Mexico something other than it is, which is gloriously empty, dry land.  It makes sense to an Arizonan mind.  But it's also got these lovely mountains, and slightly different flora because it's a different desert with a different rainfall pattern.  Water is everything, especially when you get less than 19" of rain every year.

So what do I remember from that long day of driving?  Nothing except a sense of happiness.