Alamogordo, New Mexico - Pistachio's, Space Museum and Toy Trains, November 12 & 13th

After we turned the coach back west, I roughly calculated of miles we've driven since leaving home. This of course is just with the coach, not all the side trips we've taken. Can't believe it .... 4300 miles, 1000 of it in Texas! There's still another 500 miles before we leave the coach in Queen Valley for 3 1/2 weeks while we fly home for Christmas.

We left Van Horn, Texas at 8:45 am and headed out on the I-10. We followed along the Rio Grande River for the most part so there's enhanced border control areas with Mexico being so close. We were waved through at the checkpoint with no questions asked.

Lots of bug spatter. Doesn't seem to matter how often Ray cleans the windshield.

Just about to El Paso we took the 375 loop headed towards Alamogordo NM with another time change pushing the clock back another hour.  

I planned to boondock at Holloman Lake Dispersed area, but the only info I found from Campendium is that the gate was locked at the end of October .... I booked us into the KOA instead for 5 nights. We have a lovely patio site. Nice especially since it will be 28F overnight for the nights we are here. (Update, the gate at Holloman Lake was open... oh well the KOA is more central)

A huge site, Patio #40

After set up, we headed out for some Sushi. We have not had that since we left home. :) It was delicious. Once we did a little grocery shopping and unloaded it at the MH, it's off for a drive through White Sands National Monument, mostly to see where Ray needs to be for his shots later.

Here is a video to show how extensive these dunes are.

Ray will be heading back to White Sands for some sunset shots this week. The park doesn't unlock the gates until 7 am which is way past sunrise.

Sunday we did some shopping to restock our "larder" and then went to the McGinn's PistachioLand-World's Largest Pistachio. Quite the place. They offer a tour on the hour, but as all the nuts are off the trees at this time of year, we decided to not bother. lol Ray wandered around taking some pictures and did manage to find some still on a tree. On the way here from Van Horn, we saw a huge orchard and were wondering what they grew and now we know. :)

After buying some pistachios and Ray sampling their ice cream we popped back home for lunch before heading out to the Space Museum. Ray here for the next bit.

Museum of Space History

There's quite a display outside the museum, one-half of it is old missiles used for war purposes, which to me is nothing to do with space.

F1 Rocket Engine

Mercury 1 Reentry Capsule

Little Joe used to test capsule reentry.

First you enter the elevator to the fifth level and then work your way back down.  The elevators look like this:

Although, Deb decided to be beamed up instead.

First Apollo Moon Landing Memorabilia

Direction Thrusters

Apollo Moon Landing stuff

To scale Apollo reentry capsule

Yummy looking Apollo space food.

The museum display below features the monkey (Ham) sent into space, including the space suit and capsule he got sent up in.  His gravesite is on the museum grounds. Someone nicely left him a banana instead of flowers. 

There's a display of space suits and at the end of the tour, there's a place for kids to put on their own space suit. Of course you can buy them for $60 each in the gift store, extra for gloves and helmet. lol

Air pack for space walks.

We both tried their simulators, me a Challenger landing and Deb a jet pack. Spoiler alert.... we both crashed!

Finally, once out of the building we toured the g-force sled and the memorial to the Challenger 7 crew killed on lift-off.

It was a pretty impressive building with great informative displays.

Back at the campsite, while I'm cooking ribs on the BBQ, Ray headed off to the Toy Train Museum.

A long, long time ago when I was under 10, my Dad took me to someone's place who built a huge model railway in his basement basement. I've been a fan ever since, so it's a must going to the museum here. They have a small train with a track running four blocks for the little kids. One of the volunteers gave me an excellent tour and I took many pictures. However, the 12 inches behind the computer didn't check the f/stop.  A setting of 20 instead of 8 makes for many dark and blurry images.  Did manage a few though after my discovery.

Still a little blurry.

One of two rooms of track.

There are many track scales, the one above is a T scale.  The loco in the picture actually pulls cars.

The next three pictures are of track set up in the second room.

Just some of the hundreds of locos and cars on display

Once he got back it we started a fire and sat outside and enjoyed the sun, a little chilly at 64F but so nice to actually sit outside without any bugs.