Until the day this picture was taken I had no idea that Smokey the Bear was from New Mexico. The picture was taken in Capitan, New Mexico, the home stomping grounds of the bear. Granted, Smokey was a resident of the National Zoo for most of the 26 years his life. He was very popular. During his lifetime he received millions of visitors. His mail was so significant that in 1964 the United States Postal Service gave him his own unique zip code. Continue reading →

I was surprised how little I really knew about the subject of Billy the Kid. But I hadn’t really given it much thought in the last few decades. Now, I’m glad I’ve cleared up that ambiguity. Wikipedia has a great write-up of the situation that produced the legend of Billy. It’s relatively short and seems to lay out the whole situation of what was going on in Lincoln County, New Mexico during the late 1870′s and early 1880′s. Continue reading →

Whenever I’m on a car trip with a group of friends, there’s always an issue of sleep. Sleep cycles aren’t as much of a problem at home. We can all stop and take a nap whenever we want. However, in the car, it becomes more of an issue. When you have multiple people the issue starts to compound itself and, unless you have a motorhome, finding a comfortable place to take a nap can be an issue. Traveling has some stress associated with it. I’m glad he found a place to get comfy.

This picture is not really of space aliens landing on Earth. It is actually a picture I took at the International UFO Museum And Research Center  of a mock-up designed to spur interest in the subject. I’m not sure how you feel about space aliens. I’m just glad the admission the the International UFO Museum And Research Center was only $5. Continue reading →

The question that you really need to ask yourself is whether you believe that other life forms exist somewhere else in the rest of the universe in which we find ourselves. The answer to the question isn’t really important unless you have a lot of time on your hands and don’t know what to do with your life, in which case the whole issue can become something of an obsession for you. Continue reading →

Roswell, New Mexico is a city southeastern corner of New Mexico. It has a population of about 50,000 and is a center for farming, dairying, ranching, manufacturing, distribution, and petroleum production and a few other things according to Wikipedia. But the most significant thing about Roswell is that is was the center of a 1947 controversy concerning whether an alien spaceship crashed near the town. Continue reading →

If you drive southwest of Carlsbad, NM you’ll find the Lincoln National Forest. Sitting Bull Falls is a series of waterfalls located within a canyon in that National Forest. We visited the site on my southern New Mexico trip. I’m not sure how we found out about it. My friend Tony, who was driving the car, said he wanted to visit the falls. So we did. It was a fairly healthy drive outside of Carlsbad to the waterfalls. Continue reading →

It’s my friend John at the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. The place is really big. It’s said that upwards of 100,000 bats fly out of this entrance when they leave for their nightly feeding in the summer. According to GORP, the colony of Mexican free-tailed bats at Carlsbad Cavern declined from an estimated 8.7 million in 1936 to approximately 200,000 in 1973. That’s still a lot of bats coming out of that opening. One day I plan on visiting for the bat flight. In the meantime I had a great experience visiting the caverns. For more information on Carlsbad Caverns you might want to visit Yelp or TripAdvisor. Original picture located here.

The primary purpose of my trip to New Mexico was to visit Carlsbad Caverns and to do a little camping. Here I am with my friend Tony at the entrance to the national Park. Carlsbad Caverns is rated as one of the great natural wonders of the world. I’m not sure why I had never been there before. I guess everything takes time and there’s a time and a place for everything. Wikipedia has a great article on the caverns. Even better are pictures of the caverns. I’d like to show you mine, but there are much better ones located here and here. It is one of the most amazing of natural wonders. Original picture located here.

The White Sands National Monument  likes to bill itself as “Like No Place Else on Earth” and I think they’re right. I’ve been to a few places and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Sure, I’ve seen white sand. I’ve seen deserts. I’ve been on a few sand dunes in my day. But, I never have been anywhere quite like White Sands National Monument. I was taken aback by the whiteness of the place. It is, as far as I have seen, a somewhat unique area and the word unique is my favorite when I decide the significance of a location. Continue reading →