Alaska Kiwi: Alamogordo - Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

November 15^th thru 18^th

Alamogordo we stayed here for 2 evenings, as there is lot happening here that we wanted to see and enjoy. We visited New Mexico Museum of Space History & International Space Hall of Flame. On display was the history of space flight from the very beginning to the present. There were many mock ups of the actual crafts used in the exploration of space; all this technology and history in one place was just amazing.

The afternoon we spent at the White Sands National Monument, another amazing place. The sand dunes are white gypsum sand. Here is the largest acreage of gypsum sand dunes in the world. A small portion of the dunes make up the national monument, and the rest of it is military property where testing of weapon systems is performed. We had a lot of fun on the dunes sliding down them in borrowed sleds. We also went on a ranger guided walking tour of the dunes just before sunset.

Alamogordo

Space History Museum

Entrance to White Sand Monument

White Sands late afternoon

The next stop was 120 miles down the road to Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, where there is a migratory bird sanctuary and we arrived on the weekend of the bird festival. We camped about 5 miles from the refuge at a very basic campground where we were hooked up to electricity. We felt very fortunate to get a campsite at all this evening and like most of the evenings lately the temperatures are dropping below freezing. We drove to the refuge and were very fortunate to see a flock of geese take off and land in front of us. The highlight was at sunset when thousands of cranes returned to the small lake in front of the viewing platform where we were standing. Wave after wave of cranes came thru the sunset to land on the small lake in front of us, what a wonderful beautiful experience to see these magnificent birds come to roost at sunset.