Las Cruces, New Mexico

Our departure from Tucson and travel to Las Cruces was chaotic as we were trying to get a window between Tuscon rain and another Las Cruces wind storm.  David and I jumped into the truck after camp pack up just as heavy drops fell.  We met one brief dust storm on the way to Las Cruces. We were very blessed that we were only in the storm for a couple of minutes.  Those are scary, with visibility down to just a few feet.  When we arrived at our campground there was barely a breeze and I wondered if I hadn’t needed to worry but as we finished set up the wind started shaking our trailer.  We stayed in the trailer and did our school work.  Will and I took some items to donate to Goodwill and made a Walmart run.  We enjoyed a quiet evening.

Saturday morning we headed out hoping to go to the Museum of Space History in Alamagordo and the White Sands National Park.  As we headed out that way the drive took us past White Sands Missile Range where my dad was stationed in the Army from 1969 – 1970.  The drive there seemed so familiar.  I was 5 ½ when we left there but we drove that road every Sunday for church.  We had Sunday School out on the base but went to Sacrament Meeting in Las Cruces back when there were two separate church meetings every Sunday.  Colin was born at the the military hospital there.  The signs along the road said we could go to the Missle Park (Dad reminded me I called it the Missile Garden when we lived there) and a Museum.  I thought we should visit those instead of the Alamagordo museum so we turned on the road to WSMR.  Well, it turned out that they required REAL ID or a passport to enter the base.  I have our passports with us for our trip to Canada later but we were 30 minutes from our trailer and it already noon.

We headed to the White Sands National Park. The kids were amazed that they DID just look like snow!  I had fun telling them the famous family story about moving from WSMR to Pullman in the winter of 1970/71. When 2 yo Karine saw her first snow she exclaimed “White Sand, white sand!”  We experienced the visitor’s center, bought a few things from the gift shop, rented some sand sleds and headed out.  We spent a fun couple of hours playing in the sand before heading the hour back to our RV park.  One of kids decided each of them should be buried in the sand. This was quite a labor.

David took Myra & Will to find a running track (they only found a basketball court which they still made use of).  In the evening, we had dinner in Old Mesilla at a famous Mexican restaurant my Dad loved called La Posta.  Most of the family thought the food too spicy but Myra and I enjoyed our meals!  Because of the big winds our time in Las Cruces was cut short.  It would have been nice to go back with our passports to see if our little house was still standing on the base.