New Mexico in a day

We started the morning at the lovely Guadalupe National park bright and early. I woke (amazingly) just before sunrise. Our original itinerary had us hitting up White Sands and Roswell for the day. We decided to skip White Sands in favor of the Very Large Array closer to the middle of the country. Roswell was a quick and fun stop. We went into the UFO Museum and Research center. The thing that amazed me most about all of the documentation that they had was how badly the government handled the whole shebang. If theý'd have been a little more forthcoming in the first place they wouldn't have this whole conspiracy. We ate at a local bar and grill with decent food and of course I had to try the "Alien Amber" ale. It was quite good,very malty with a light hop flavor.



We then cruised our way up to the very large array (VLA). It's about 1/2 way up New Mexico and a little bit west of the center of the state. It was a little bit out of our way from our earlier planned route but it was completely worth it. The walking tour and video presentation were good and each parabolic dish itself is extremely impressive. We also met a jackrabbit who was not afraid to let humans get close to get some decent pictures.

We decided to be adventurous and didn't backtrack from the VLA back to the interstate. Instead we took some local roads just west of the VLA that were a more direct approach to Durango Colorado. What we didn't know is that the route we'd planned on the map included a significant chunk on a long unimproved road. The prius handled admirably on what started out as a packed gravel road and ended up in a rutted hard packed dirt road. We spent about 60 miles on that road and it turned out to be a great experience. The road was flanked with large ranches and all in all was very wild. We startled a group of antelope who raced us up the road for about a mile. I was going about 25 miles an hour and they were making slightly better time than that when they finally turned on to a side road on the ranch. They were only about 50 yards in front of us (on the other side of a fence and plenty of stopping distance if they decided to bolt in front of us). Just a few minutes later we saw a buck antelope hanging out on the other side of the road. Our route turned out to be perfect. It put us exactly where we wanted to be and now we were just a few hours south of Durango.

We popped off of the unimproved road around 7:00 PM and we were now in northern NM. It is exceptionally beautiful. Another reason that we lucked out on this route is that we got to see a natural arch at a tiny little national monument park. It was a good chance to stretch our legs before we finished the home stretch to Durango.

We pulled in to Durango Colorado just a few minutes after 11 PM to end a perfect day on the road.