We were heading towards Albuquerque for our fire break and our trip there took us through a few cool sights and towns.
First up was the White Sands Missile Range (WSMR). This was located right next door to White Sands National Monument. So close that when they do a missile test, the Monument closes and as you hike around the monument, there are signs not to touch any bits of metal as they could be unexploded ordinance! WSMR is America's largest, fully-instrumented, open air missile range and apparently they use it for testing on average 2 days per week.
Within the WSMR, there was the White Sands Space Harbor (WSSH). This was a Space Shuttle runway and the primary training area used by NASA for Space Shuttle pilots practicing approaches and landings in the Shuttle Training Aircraft and T-38 Talon aircraft. It was only used as a landing site once for a shuttle mission, the Space Shuttle Columbia on the 30th March 1982.
Next stop was Hatch, chili capital of the world. There are 18,000 acres of chilies growing in the valley around Hatch. It wasn't a big town but there were a number of roadside food stands selling Hatch Chilies. Oddly, there was also a lot of figurines around the town, similar to those we saw in New Orleans at Mardi Gras World.
A little further down the road was the oddly named town, Truth or Consequences. This town was originally named Hot Springs but changed its name after the radio show Truth or Consequences said they would air their 10th anniversary show in the first town that changes its name to Truth or Consequences. Hot Springs won and the name has stayed since.
We drove through Truth or Consequences just to get off the interstate for a bit. There were signs in the town for the Spaceport. After some Googling, it turns out this is The Spaceport, the worlds first purpose-built commercial spaceport. Virgin Galactic are one of the main users for this place and it is located next to the White Sands Missile Test Site where we’d just come from! Unfortunately getting to The Spaceport would have taken us 42 miles away from our route so we had to miss the visitors center and the tour of the facility.
Our final stop before Albuquerque was a little bit of a detour off our route but it was well worth it, especially for Astronomer Lee. I recognised this site from the film First Contact with Jody Foster where she put on the head phones and first heard alien contact. To Lee, the Very Large Array (VLA) had a more scientific purpose, and was a great opportunity for him to see something he had read so much about up close and personal. "Arecibo next!", he says.
We both had a great time in the visitors center learning about the VLA including how is constructed, how it operates today and what it is used for. We then got to walk outside around the dishes and see the train track used to move them to different positions in order to get different perspectives of the objects in view.
Back on the road, we then headed to our next destination "ABQ.... B!TCH" (NB: quote from Breaking Bad, not from the Hollingdales)
Glad to hear there was no reported mishaps in the chili capital of the world - Lee could have easily sampled too much and needed an urgent evacuation!!
ReplyDeleteThe VLA looked brilliant and it must have been great to get to visit this and see the array close up. I particularly liked the photo with a dish in the hangar as you can kind of ignore how portable they are or assume that they are static.
As you both know hot Chile’s are not on my list of favourite foods ;-) but am wondering if you might have bought some :-)
ReplyDeleteCan well imagine that the VLA was very much of intrest to Lee.
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