Missile Tests, Jornada Mogollon and Gene Roddenberry...

What, you may ask, could missile tests, Jornada Mogollon and Gene Roddenberry possibly have in common?  Well, there is a pretty interesting answer to that (at least as far as I'm concerned).  I will  admit that I had some private doubts concerning our scheduled stop in Alamogordo, New Mexico.  Although I had designed this itinerary, the scene as we made our way into the area was bleak at best.  This whole area is one color and one color only -- brown.  The ground is brown, the trees are brown, the buildings are brown, most of the birds of brownish -- really the only color to be found in the landscape appears on the hot rod cars driven by the many, many members of the United States Armed Forces indigenous to the area.  Those guys clearly know color and they favored brightly colored versions of almost any brand of BIG truck, Dodge Charger or Ford Mustang....everything else though...brown.  Also, just as an aside, military chow must be seriously awful if the number of fast food joints, drive-up ice-cream and hole-in-the-wall restaurants listed by Trip Advisor is any indicator.  I've never seen so many varieties of fast food in such a concentrated area in my life -- not even on Clayton Road in Concord (and that's saying something!).

Well, I'm kinda off track here with the whole food thing, although you should at least see where we dined in high style last night:

Rated #3 in all of Alamogordo!

 Try the Tiger Burger...Really! It's Great!

We slept off our really delicious Tiger burgers and roused ourselves at the crack of 0900 hours to begin a whirlwind sightseeing tour of the Tularosa Basin in southern New Mexico.  We are in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert which actually comprises 140,001 squire miles within the United States - (no, I don't know why the "1" is important enough to list) and at a total of 200,000 square miles is apparently the largest desert in North America.   Anyway, we again drift away from topic so let me just say that we covered a teeny, tiny fraction of this amazingly brown environment and I came away just a-m-a-z-e-d.

We began the day in a headlong rush to get to the White Sands National Monument.  Yes, for my fellow baby-boomers or weapons of mass destruction buffs, this is the White Sands of missile range fame, of exploding nuclear ordinance and many, many rocket launches that fed the space program from its infancy to our modern era.  We had to rush because we learned from the threateningly warning flashing roadsigns that the highway would be closed promptly at noon due to -- wait for it -- missile testing!!!  Now, some in the reading audience might wonder why we didn't turn back and visit at a safer time, but those who might question this simply don't understand the importance of the quest to obtain as many National Park Passport stamps as possible, so, we did the Clark Griswald Family routine of rushing the Visitor Center, taking a lap around the scenic drive and escaping with our lives and our stamp.  I must say though that it is well worth the stop if you find yourself in the middle of the 200,000 square mile Chihuahuan Desert driving through the Tularosa Basin.  The best description I can come up with is that it is "other worldly" and even a little disorienting - everything is so white and it becomes hard to tell where you actually are.

We made a quick refueling stop at the #1 Rated place to eat in Alamogordo and treated ourselves to INCREDIBLE frozen custard deserts at Caliche's Frozen Custard (they also serve Nathan's hotdogs but that didn't rise to the top of the menu with frozen custard beckoning).  Refueled and refocused and keeping with the White Sands theme we headed off for the New Mexico Museum of Space History because apparently New Mexico has a storied history in Space Travel (Roswell sightings aside).  It was a terrific little museum - four stories that took you literally from Sir Isaac Newton's discovery of gravity to the Mar's Rover.  The big focus was on the Space Race and New Mexico is described as the "cradle of America's space program" and because this museum is also home to the International Space Hall of Fame we got to see some really unexpected things - like what, you ask?  Well, this is the final resting place of the world's first "astrochimp" - Ham - and not only is his grave here but his tiny little chimp space suit, too!  Well, the fun wasn't over with just that!  Did you, any of you, know that Gene Roddenberry has been inducted into the International Space Hall of Fame?  Well, he has and they have a whole section of the museum devoted to his contribution to America's love of space.  There was important stuff that he imagined onto our television screens with his Star Trek series - stuff that went from fiction to fact like laptop computers and handheld devices and flat screen television sets and they talked about all that but they also had the Star Trek toys and models and games and even some props from the old sets.  Barry had to come back twice to find me and once I had to go find him so I could get a proper picture in the "Beam me up Scotty" transporter...

Beam Me Up Scotty!

My favorite episode: The Trouble With Tribbles

This is the look on my face when I'm attempting a selfie...

I did my darnedest to lobby for a trip to the Toy Train Museum but got outvoted by my husband.  Note there were four of us in the vehicle but a little known rule that says, "I'm driving. I rule." was invoked and we ended up in the BLM (not "Black Lives Matter" - Bureau of Land Management) Three Rivers Petroglyph Site.  Again, lots more brown desert for miles and miles, then more miles of driving into the site and then a lonely little ranger station and a brochure that described the site as "Messages Carved in Rock."  The Ranger hustled us out of his hut and pointed us to what a brochure described as a "rugged" half-mile trail...this was a gross understatement of the "challenge" that lay before us.  We were already at about 5,000' and the climb was more of a rock scramble than a trail but, like so many things in life, the effort paid incredible dividends.

Barry, Gwen and Wick (trying to hide behind Gwen)
That's Sierra Blanca Peak in the background at 11,973'

The views were simply astonishing - we could see clear to the Sacramento Mountains to the east and the San Andres and Oscura Mountains to the west.  It stretches 150 miles north-south and we had clear views of White Sands National Monument, Holloman AFB, the White Sands Missile Range and even the historic Trinity nuclear test site.  The brochure told us that a prehistoric people, the Jornada Mogollon (I practiced and practiced but still can't pronounce it properly but given that they were prehistoric how do we really know what the heck they were called anyway) lived here for over a 1,000 years before they disappeared - poof - just vanished.  The brochure, which Barry carried and read aloud for us (don't worry children - I've had a close eye on him the whole vacation and I really am pretty sure he is still the same human you once knew as your father), stated that "petroglyphs (rock carvings) have a unique visual impact providing an immediate connection between the modern viewer and the prehistoric artist."  I gotta say I found that to be really true - whether the thin air, the effort involved in mountain-goating up the slope or the wonder of what a few prehistoric tools could communicate - it was an amazing feeling to put our feet where ancient ancestors walked and wonder about the lives they lived.  

So hard to imagine how long ago these were left and for what purpose.

So, I guess the great moral to this story is that sometimes its a pretty good thing to have the "I drive. I rule" rule.  This foray made Barry's day, closed the rings on my insistent exercise app and gifted us the experience of touching a long ago people.

My cutie-pie cowboy.

Land of the Snow Birds - Not Ornithologically Speaking...

So we beat feet ahead of the storms ravaging California and head for the land of the Great White-Haired Crinkle-Skinned Snow Birds - that's Arizona to those of you who think winter has to be cold and grey.  Every fall this little known but not so rare bird navigates the great asphalt jungle of America's highways fleeing the cold of their northern mating grounds.  We too thought we would spend a little time on this Excellent Tourbus Adventure in a warmer climate but the joke was on us as we arrived in Benson, Arizona to snow and ice and cold.

Now we aren't gonna let a little snowy, icy, coldness get in the way of a good time and we knew that plenty of adventures awaited us because Wick and Gwen, who actually have no excuse because they're permanent snow birds at their Wrinkle Ranch in San Antonio, met us right here in Benson, AZ.  The day was getting short and us snowbirds like to turn in right after TAPS (yes, they play taps every evening in the RV "Resort") so we decided to take a quick run out to Kartchner Caverns State Park.  We had time to explore the Visitor's Center a bit and brave the Arctic wind to look around their hummingbird garden before we're driven back to the vehicles - not by snow - but by my dearly loved sister-in-law's loud and somewhat - uhm - "off color" exclamations of bird "awareness." We had been fortunate enough, despite the weather to see three birds that were first sightings to us all - who knows, we might have seen ten or twelve more but we were forced to beat a hasty retreat when Gwen spotted the guy in this picture (a Red-Cockaded Woodpecker, by the way) and begins to point and holler, "PECKER! PECKER! PECKER!)  It was at this point that we bee-lined for the vehicle.  Sheesh.....

So today's adventure begins with multiple attempts to breach the security of the United States Army at Fort Huachuca.  And, while I can't pronounce it, I can tell you it is home to the 111th Battalion Military Intelligence something-or-other which made getting on base slightly more challenging but we were determined to get in there because some lady at Wild Birds Unlimited in San Antonio may or may not have told The Brother that there was some great birding on base.  Ultimately we landed before some kind of humorless military tribunal where we were ushered one-by-one into interview with what appeared to be 14 year-old military police.  Turns out that they were pretty good about entertaining idiot tourists and we managed to breach the perimeter and get in -- no birds - and this is going to become a theme for this day -- but we did get to see a great museum.  And, like taps at the RV Resort at 5 p.m. sharp, we oldsters like a good museum.  


We went on from the birdless Fort to Tombstone.  Yesiree! Bob! THAT Tombstone.  The Tombstone of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp fame.  And low and behold Tombstone isn't just a movie that Barry watches twice a week (or more) it is an actual place where actual cool stuff happened and where said cool stuff is now reenacted in the cheesiest and most entertaining manner you can even imagine.  I highly recommend a trip even though you won't get to see Kurt Russel, Val Kilmer, Bill Paxton or (sigh) Sam Elliott....  Barry bought us all the super deluxe, VIP passes to all the coolest stuff including the reenactment/history lesson of the Shoot Out at the OK Corral (which I pretty much knew all about from the multitude of times I've walked through the room while Barry was watching the previously referenced movie - which, in case you've already forgotten is pretty much multiple times every week). We also saw a "Performance" of a slide show/moving diorama of the history of Tombstone  narrated by Vincent Price - complete with a collapsing diorama puppet of Morgan Earp being gunned down in a tiny little pool hall.  I kid you not - it was so crazy looking that the whole audience snickered before recognizing the seriousness of the situation for the Tombstonians.  We had a blast!

I don't want to forget that we also made a grand circle tour of Southeast Arizona in search of National Park Passport stamps.  This is the little-known sport of "I can get more stamps in my passport book that you can", long engaged by the loving, aforementioned off-color yeller sister-in-law.  We visited a remarkable Fort Bowie where as the only visitors in the very remote (2 + mile hike in kind of remote) Visitor Center.  In fact Barry predicted as we huffed and puffed our way up the hill that we were probably going to get the Ranger's "whole load."  And boy by howdy we did.  I could have stayed there listening to him the whole day.  On the way up we had repeatedly speculated as to why in heaven's name the United States Government (who was apparently as crazy then as they are today) would put a fort in such a remote region where literally nothing but tumbleweed and cactus could possibly grow.  Well we got the answer to that and a whole lot more as he wove the story of the only traversable pass through the Chiricahua Mountains and the only water for 50 miles in the form of Apache Springs.  The name of the springs and the mountain gives you a hint of what's gonna happen next and, sure enough, pretty soon the Cavalry and the Apache's are fussing around about the water and then the government sends some West Point graduate name Bascom out to solve the whole thing and he promptly calls Cochise a liar, while holding him hostage and then Cochise cuts his way out of the tent and well...the next 12 years didn't go all that great and then Geronimo comes along and a lot of settlers and Cavalry guys get dead and the Indians lose their tribal lands and in the end Hollywood made a movie of it starring Jimmy Stewart which I plan to rent when I get home.

We visited Ramsey Canyon which is a Nature Conservancy site dedicated to people who wear clothing emanating strictly from REI.  While not in possession of said clothing, we were still allowed access and after additional huffing and puffing on the trail were rewarded with this view of a Cooper's Hawk and a Gray Squirrel, which both households have in their respective backyards.  Its okay though because today while we were having a tire repaired I read an article in an out-of-date Women's Day magazine about all the health benefits of being out in nature.

We rounded out our whirlwind of activities in the Benson area with a caving trip to Kartchner Caverns State Park, further attempts to bird watch at water treatment plants, a stamp foray into Coronado National Historic Site and a trek to the Wilcox Playa Wildlife Area where we were assured there were 20,000 Sandhill Cranes sitting waiting for us at the waste water ponds... You'll notice there are no pictures of Sandhill Cranes (we did see a few dozen at about 4,000 feet in the area) but we really can't complain because our trip netted us several birds never before seen and lots of great laughs as we stumbled our way around about 1 week too early for any self-respecting migrating birds to show up.

WARNING!!! Don’t Turn Your Backs On the Children.

So we’re four, count ‘em four days in and it takes only about that amount of time for our “children,” including the honorary ones to go beserk.  They’ve launched some kind of demented # media campaign in support of one another or in an effort to discredit their upbringing or something and this morning I wake to this on our Facebook feed:

Barry Innovates BBQ Cleaning...

Now this all starts because I call Scott out on FACEBOOK for his "I will not put up with this kind of crap" mode of home repair.  I ask you...does it actually make sense when smoke alarms are going off for no apparent reason to simply yank them from the wall?  No.  The answer its no it doesn't.  Well, this becomes a whole bunch of ridiculousness on Facebook and then the siblings become involved.  Like some kind of muskox brigade forming the defensive circle around the eldest they pace and paw the ground and ultimately Elisa declares a #STANDWITHSCOTT strike and the next thing I know this...

I simply fail to understand how HE gets to be some kind of protected class or object of awe or whatever this is, but apparently now thanks to the family's honorary little sister, Lauren Gehring, Barry has his own # (that's "hashtag" to you less social media savvy folks) -- for those who may yet be unaware -- our children were thrown into chaos on my birthday when they discovered their father had gifted me with couples, senior citizen yoga.  Yeah, kinda frightened me too but hey, I'm all about reinventing myself.

things Are Not Exactly Looking Up....

Day 2. That’s 2 of 30 for those who are keeping up...

I’m riding along minding my own business in the “Co-Pilot” position, which as you might guess, is not a permanent assignment during Tourbus Adventuring, when in my typical proficient multi-tasking  manner I say,”I’ve been thinking and I have e a question for you...”

Before I can draw breath toask my perfectly innocuous question, the individual occupying the “Pilot” post says, “Are you supposed to read me rights first?  Am I going to need to retain counsel?”

This.  This is what my life is going to be for 30 days.  

If we make it past the Smart Ass stage of the trip we will be in Colton for the next couple of days seeing a man about a horse.  Stopping at Russ Thompson Stables in San Bernardino and AA Ranch in Anza.    

I will say that Barry is trying to claim that what I actually said was, “all right. This is what I’m gong to question you about...” But I don’t think anyone should put much stock in his version of the spoken word...it’s not like he actually really listened.

And Thus It Begins...

I'm not sure you can actually say we are Tourbus Adventuring yet.  We are night number one - that is numero uno for my Spanish Speakers.  We are 4 hours from home.  This is day 1 of 30.  That's 30 days of togetherness and he has already started...

So I'm minding my own business tonight talking to Scott on the phone.  He and Lynn returned from their trip to Los Olivos and having not seen them figured I should check in.  We cover several subjects including his fame and acclaim as a speaker at the Cape Conference in Monterey (he's in quite the demand as a speaker these days in case you didn't know) and then the subject of their homecoming enters the subject pool.  Apparently, they arrive home to every single smoke detector in the house singing away in full voice!  YIKES!  I very helpfully offering my supportive commentary and ask, "Oh my gosh!  Why would they do that?  How did you get them to stop? Etc..."  My darling son's response?

"Oh I just tore them all off the wall."

Hmmmmm....

"So," says I, "Apparently greatness really does only take so many forms...." (This is one of Scott's favorite statements when he gets accused of being just like his father.)  I know this because this is Barry's first choice of action in the face of any loud, blaring alarm of any kind.  We have several random wires sticking out of walls in our house and motorhome.

"Are you kidding me!" I rejoin, "There HAS to be a better answer than that!"

Now Scott begins his confrontative pronouncement that he'd sure like to know what I think that diagnostic procedure would look like when we hear from the Peanut Gallery apparently monitoring the on speaker conversation:

"Maybe you should just talk to it and see how its feeling."

Yup.  Gonna be a long 30 days....

Barry is "Home Free"

Odessa, TX   March 21, 2017

This is a day on the Excellent Tourbus Adventure that shall not soon be forgotten but rather than being of the “shall not be spoken” – “shall not be mentioned” variety it will be shouted to the rooftops and to whoever will listen that I have the greatest Sweetie-Pie in the whole entire world! For several years now I’ve been following an a cappella group that I first saw on a show that aired on NBC called “Sing Off” that I don’t think is even on television anymore.  Home Free competed in and won the fourth season of that show and I’ve been in love ever since.  I’ve downloaded all their albums and every time they post a new music video Barry becomes a conscripted viewer.  Love them.  Just sayin….

Flashback to Christmas morning  2016 and guess what?!!?  I’ve got tickets IN MY HAND for HOME FREE in a benefit performance in Odessa, TX.  All I’ve gotta do is get there and, nope, that’s already arranged, too!!  And, now, here I am.  I didn’t have any idea what to expect.  Their music videos are pretty great but they just kinda stand there and sing – incredible singing - usually in great locations, and they are really cute but still I just didn’t have an expectation other than I knew I was going to hear some really great music from the mouths of really talented guys.

I am here to tell you that boy by howdy I was just blown away by their concert!  From the very first song to the very last curtain call they just outdid anything I could have imagined.  Their beatbox voice, one of the founding members of the group, Adam Rupp is I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E – sounds beyond weird for me, a woman of a “certain” age to be raving about a beatboxer but wow, just wow!  The other founding member of their group Tim Foust is their bass singer and his vocals vibrated clear through your chest – like subsonic whale language or something.  Well, this is going off kilter here and not sounding at all like what I want you to know about this experience.  They entertain, chat,

This is a picture they took that night and had everyone post to Facebook.

engage social media, dance, and in general provide a world class performance that threatens to turn me into to some kind of Senior Citizen Home Free Groupie and ain’t nobody that wants that! 

For those of you who know me, and knew my mother, you’ll get what a BIG HAIRY DEAL this next bit is – their pre-finale, finale song was – wait for it – How Great Thou Art!!!! I mean REALLY?!!?  I just couldn’t believe it.  Their finale was Ring of Fire in which the bass nearly vibrated my eardrums out.  I L-O-V-E-D every single minute of it and think you’d need to search high and low to find a man that would buy not only you a ticket but one for himself, one for my beloved big brother and one for his wife my wonderful sister-of-the-heart, too.  Then he took me to Texas on an Excellent Tourbus Adventure and let me watch birds until my eyes popped out and we got through the whole entire trip without much swearing or yelling.  And then we got to have this kind of great time and the trip isn't even over yet!

Update on the Excellent Tourbus Adventure.  We enjoyed the grand circle tour of Tucson’s Oro Valley as we made a misguided, albeit game attempt to follow the IPhone’s confidently voiced instructions regarding the location of the University of Arizona’s Biosphere 2 project.  Try as we might, we just couldn't maneuver the Polar Prince (Barry’s new Ford F-150 with heated, cooled and massaging front seats) through the backyards of the million dollar desert homes blocking our path through the hills and canyons of this Sonoran Desert wonderland.  Dead end after dead end finally convinced us (and by “us” I mean “him”) to go back to the highway and perhaps look for the usual roadside attraction signs that seem to inevitably arise when there is a (Wow!) roadside attraction…

All this to accomplish a long-time wish to walk in the footsteps of Pauly Shore with a visit to what Barry continues to insist on calling the Bio-Dome.  For those of you with a similar heart’s desire, just follow SR 77 way out into the desert and you will, in fact, encounter the promised Roadside Attraction indicator signs.  It is quite an operation and we made our way into the visitor’s center, purchased our Senior Discount (ugh..really?) tickets and were whisked away by very enthusiastic senior citizen docents to tour Biosphere 2.  The complex is absolutely incredible and in an Exit Survey taken after our tour it was nearly impossible to answer the prompt to name our favorite exhibit.  And yes, for those of you with the compelling desire to know, parts of the 1996 Pauly Shore movie, Bio-Dome were filmed right on site. 

Our tour began with a 5-minute presentation by an entomologist from the University who presented on the charisma of bugs and their misaligned reputation among humans.  Did you know, for instance that bugs make up approximately 80% of all species on earth and represent the most bio-diverse and helpful of the world’s species?  You probably didn’t really realize how important this information and presentation would be – I know I sure wish I’d paid better attention – I mean it was only 5 minutes of my life and it was an information–packed, creatively clever presentation – and I really, really do wish I’d paid more attention…

After watching a 20 minute video on the history and mission of Biosphere 2 (can anyone tell me where or what is Biosphere 1?) we schlepped along with a tour group now joined by the single, over-arching goal of investigating the purpose of this multi-million dollar wonder of modern engineering – in fact I gotta tell you this thing ought to be on that show – its that amazing.  We trekked up and down stairs, through air locks and across platforms to view the tropical ocean, the rain forest, the tropical desert and down, down into the bowels of the complex to view the GIANT swamp coolers and enormous biomechanical lung that provide the life support for this world within a world (cause Biosphere 1 is our world – Planet Earth and Biosphere 2 is this man-made, genius engineered world within the world).

I’m not always a fan of spending tax money on figuring out how to live on Mars or determining what dung beetle can roll the most poop but I have to say this complex, which appears to be wholly privately funded, does a great job of explaining how each of these things and a million more of its research projects are critically important to each of us right now and, perhaps even more importantly, will significantly enhance our ability to survive the Zombie Apocolypse.  

Maybe the most amazing part of the tour was what I think they called the Giant Lung, which is exactly what it sounds like.  It is deep in the basement and this picture doesn’t even begin to do it justice.  The room is HUGE, bigger than HUGE really and has an immense disc suspended from the ceiling with attached legs.  It is surrounded by enormous rubber bladder-like things that allow the building to breathe.  It was explained to us that without this structure the building would explode due to the build-up of gases caused by the near-total seal achieved in the engineering.  The last demonstration of the marvel was a group yelp that echoed again and again and again – I’ve never heard anything like it other than to tell you that even the quietest conversation echoed through the cavernous space like the feedback of the announcers microphone in an old-school baseball stadium. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! 

Getting out of the room was liking walking against hurricane
force winds on the bow of a ship! Wow!

We exited the formal tour (no more hand holding or guided explanations – and this becomes important in about 3 more minutes) and entered the self-initiated portion of the exploration.  We especially enjoyed the Mars Sustainability Project, which showed me, for the first time ever, the real benefits to some of these NASA projects that I’ve never really gotten behind.  It was amazing to peruse the living space of the original inhabitant scientists in the Closed Biosphere Project where they lived for 2 years!  And, at the end of the tour they even provided cookies! 

Wow! Cookies, cool!! Of course, after such a long, hot and arduous journey of climbing, crouching, stepping and listening a cookie absolutely seemed in order and I bee-lined my way right over to the plate of offerings.  Now, I will here admit that I noticed only the cookies – not the display accompanying the cookies – not the signage over the cookies – and certainly not the fact that Barry (the King of All Things Cookie) had moved in the complete opposite direction of the cookies… Assuming he had simply failed to notice the cookies (I mean, hey, you’ve been following along our travails, I mean "travels" as we’ve managed to get lost getting anywhere, right?) well anyway, I assumed he didn’t see the cookies so with my cookie firmly entrenched in my mouth, I picked up a second cookie which I graciously offered my cookie-loving and "supportive" husband…He firmly declined and in response to my wounded “I was being thoughtful with my cookie gathering” look he walked over and pointed to THE SIGN:  

OH! Chocolate "CHIRP" Cookies!!!

Not too many legs stuck in the teeth...

And that folks, this is how we roll...