Roswell, NM Visit

No visit to Roswell, NM is complete without a stop at the UFO museum downtown. They have exibits of all of the history of the UFO pheonenom as it relates to Roswell also much from around the world. There is a complete library located in the museum so that you can use to research the subject.







Here Barbara is examining a fibreglass horse that has a number of newspaper items regarding UFOs laminated to its exterior! There are many exibits located all around the museum.










This is a wooden replica of a stone tablet found in Mexico that was of Mayan origination. It has enthralled many UFOers for many years. They see it as a representation of an alien spaceman controlling a spacecraft.















If you click on this photo you will get a better view of what they say is the explanation for the symbols on the above slab.
















Here is a photo of the exibit showing a representation of the supposed examination of an alien by the military in a Roswell Army Airfield Hanger in 1947.










All in all we were impressed with Roswell in general. It was a military town until the late sixties when the Walker Air Force Base closed. This caused a drop in population of about 50 percent! Since then they have battled back and seem to be reasonably prosperous. The current population is around 50,000 people.

During World War II the Roswell Army Airfield was the place where they trained with B-29s and the ones that dropped the Atom Bomb trained here before heading to the Pacific.

The New Mexico Military Institute, a 4 year high school and two year college combined, is a beautiful campus and has a huge presence in the city. Some of the more memorable graduates of this institution are Conrad Hilton, Roger Staubach and Sam Donaldson.

There are all of the modern shopping opportunities available here. Most of the chains have representation here, such as McDonalds, Appelbees, Chili's, Sams Club, Walmart, Super Kmart, etc.

City of the Rocks Redeux

We are on our way back to Kansas and decided to stop at the City of the Rocks State Park with the coach since we had descovered earlier that the sites were large enough for us.

When we arrived we were told that all of the sites were full and would have to dry camp until one opened up. Not to be denied that quickly, we decided to take a look at the sites and make sure. Much to our surprise, there was one site open and it was perfect for us, so we quickly occupied the site as it was first come first served! Talk about lucky! The office told us that it had been full for some time and people were dry camping trying to sneak in and get a site with electricity and water!

The park is quite busy now compared to what it was back in November when we last were here but it is quite peaceful and restful.

We took the opportunity while here to go Geocaching here in the park. Barbara shown above is at her first geocache since registering her name with geocaching.com. She is known as Cachegal and I am known as Canvasman! This is also her first cache with the new Garmin GPS that she got for her birthday. She wanted to have her own so she was not dependent on me. I think that there was a bit of competitive nature coming to the front on that! She wanted to have some pride of finding caches on her own. There are two caches here in the park and we found both.
(Truth be known, I found them both, but don't say anything to Barbara. OK?)
This is a telephoto shot of the campground from the site of the second geocache that we found. It is about a third of a mile from where we were.











This is the same shot without the telephoto element added. You can see the lovely setting that we are priviledged to be at today.











Our site was very long and open. Just the ticket for a relaxed stay here.














The far hill was where I took the telephoto shot from. We will have to come back again as this is really what RVing is all about!

The Springs at Borrego

We thought we would share with everyone a few photos of the RV Resort we are staying at.
The setting is very pretty and they have done a good job of designing the resort. It is fairly new and they only have about 90 sites done so far but plans are in the works to expand it.

They have a nine hole regulation golf course that is in super condition complete with a driving range as well as an eighteen hole par three course.




Here is a view of the swimming pool at the club house area. They have a number of showers in and several meeting rooms.











They have several hot tubs which have the mineral waters from the Springs. The tubs are sized for several people or you can use one that is sized for only one person.










The park is somewhat empty today but was packed to the gills over the weekend! We decided to make reservations for next winter and were only able to get Nov, Dec, and Jan as Feb is full. We are first on the waiting list if they have a cancellation so we think we will be ok.

The area has a number of sites and a lot of desert to wander around in. It is only two hours from San Diego or LA and 65 miles from Indio so you have a number of options for day trips.




They even have a nice excercise room equiped with state of the art torture equipment!

There is also a couple of nice tennis courts and two horseshoe pits.

Borrego Springs brags that it does not have any major franchises like McDonalds, etc and no stop lights!

We did see a bumper sticker that said: "Experience Global Warming, Borrego Springs, CA"

The Slot Cache

When we learned that we were going to visit the Slot in Anzo_Borrego State Park, we did some checking and found out that there was a Geocache located there so we added it to our to do list and headed out.

Here Neal is taking the rocks off of the cache after finding it.






The cache was an amunition can which is used by a lot of caches as they are waterproof when they are closed. This one held a number of trade items and cards from people who had found it as well as the normal log for us to find.









Here Dan is signing the log since he has now listed with Geocaching.com and is an official member.

We were very pleased with our GPS unit which allows me to download the information directly to it from my computer making it very easy. Then you tell the gps unit to find that cache and it points to it and tells you how far you are from it.

The problem we find out here is that the direct way is not available and you have to take roundabout routes to get accross the ravines and other obstructions.

This photo was taken from the cache site and it would be hard for anyone seeing it to realize that it was a trek of about one half mile back down into the canyon, then down the canyon to the junction with the main canyon, then back up the canyon to the area to climb out and return to the car! Lots of panting and some stopping for rests by the time we arrived at the car!

All in all, it was a great outing and we all had a ball!

The Slot in Anzo-Borrego State Park

Dan and Barbara's daughter told them about a site to see in the Anzo-Borrego State Park called the Slot and we decided to go and find it! Here you see both Barbaras and Dan early in the trek while they were still able to smile and were not tired.








As we progressed deeper into the canyon, we found the going a little more challenging! Here we had to be inventive to get through a tight spot mid way to the Slot.











Success! We found the Slot down the canyon from the parking spot which was at the end of a sandy rutted road that made us put the car into 4 wheel drive.










Whatever goes down must later come up to get out of the canyon. This photo is real deceptive as it appears to be a gentle climb out. It is covered with very loose rocks and it was hard to get a decent footing so we did not fall back into the canyon!

Geocaching in the Anzo-Borrego State Park

Dan and Barbara went Geocaching in the desert with us.

Here Barbara and Dan are admiring the scenic beauty of the area.







One of the Caches was down the Truckhaven Trail marked by this sign at the trail head. We were glad we had a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get us closer to the sites.










One of the caches that we found is shown here. It was a plastic drink jug with a screw on top. In the cache were a number of items which people trade or add one of their special items to. This shows the cache after some of the rocks which hide it have been removed.










This particular cache gave us a real challenge! Here Dan is giving his thoughts on the cache after we had treked over several arroyos and between here and the cache, which is on the peak under Dan's thumb another quarter of a mile away, there is yet a larger arroyo to traverse!
At this point, we decided it was not worth the effort as we had found four caches that day already and were getting a bit tired.

Anzo-Borrego State Park

We visited the Anzo-Borrego State Park visitor center in Borrego Springs with Dan and Barbara.

Anzo-Borrego is a desert state park consisting of 600,000 acres around the town of Borrego Springs where we are staying at a nice RV park for a few days. The name of the park is generated from two sources. Anzo was the Spanish explorer who first transited this area as he took cattle and immigrants to the San Francisco area to settle there. Borrego is the name for the Big Horn sheep found in the area.

The center is built partially underground and has a number of exhibits showing the desert flora and fauna as well as the creatures that live there.

There is a number of walking trails in the immediate area of the center and they have markers to identify the various species of fauna found in the desert.

The two Barbaras and Dan trying to decide which direction to head next.








Here they collared me to make sure I got into the picture!

The entire center reminded us of the Living Desert in Palm Desert, CA.