Friday

Friday, April 23

Good morning!! Today began at the normal time, 730am. With our staple breakfast at McD's. Maybe I should buy some stock or something. We sure are giving them a lot of our business!! As we were heading to breakfast, we passed our first destination, the Alameda Park Zoo. So, we knew where to come back to and eat before we went in.

We decided to go there first as it was overcast and threatening to rain. The zoo was small, but had some nice exhibits. It was early and I think a lot of the animals were still sleeping! We missed the bears and the mountain lion. A few other animals hiding out still, but bears and kittys are my favorite. Oh, and the lemurs were hiding! We saw two of them, sitting right inside the door to their indoor enclosure. They looked at us but did not come out. Said, nope! lol Too bad. Nice leisurely walk through the park and zoo. They had a mileage marker, but I am sure it was wrong. Because it certainly felt like we walked more than what it said! I think we walked 3/4 of a mile. Pretty short distance compared to OKC Zoo and Henry Doorly Zoo, but a lot for 9am. OK, maybe not.

After we left the zoo, we went to our next destination, the New Mexico Space Museum. It is set up on a mountain behind New Mexico State University. Once we were up on the 4th floor (where the exhibits begin), you could look out over Alamogordo and beyond. Amazing view. And the sun was trying to come out. We perused the Museum and saw some interesting things about rockets and space exploration. The one thing I found most interesting was they had placards on the walls of people from around the world who had been inducted into the Space Hall of Fame (not sure of the exact name). There were a lot of people I have never heard from, but some surprising ones I have! Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Hipparchus (ok, I havent heard of him), Carl Sagan (!), Galileo Galilei, and Thomas Stafford - the astronaut the Space Museum in OK was named after.

We were done relatively early since we were in the city where everything we wanted to do was located. We headed to our next destination, Las Cruces. We waved at the White Sands Missile Test Range was we drove by and bid adieu to Trinity Site. The army was not doing testing, so the freeway was not closed. When they do testing, the freeway is actually shut down for up to an hour in both directions to avoid any mishaps.

We had one thing that we wanted to do in Las Cruces and planned on spending the night. However, as we got into Las Cruces, we decided to not do our final thing and head to our next destination. HOME! We drove through some nasty storms, including hail, but we were home by about 630pm, local time. Yes, it was a day early, but believe me, it will be nice to sleep in a comfy bed! And knowing that I only have to lug my luggage out of the car one more time will be excellent. Whew!

Weather. Rain. Hail. Sun. No snow. lol Thankfully it did not rain while we were at the zoo!

Our ending mileage was 52850. Our total mileage, 6050 miles (give or take). A marathon driving vacation of 17 days. I hope you enjoyed taking my vacation with me. I will post pictures tomorrow of the glass floats I picked up in Oregon and had shipped home and the lighted tree Chris picked up in South Dakota and had shipped home. Both will be picked up tomorrow!