Our little mountain mansion almost blew over this morning as we tried to sleep in a bit. Morning coffee under strange clouds… I was worried about weather all morning, and as it turns out, despite winning in every possible way, I had every reason to be.
This morning yet again featured a fight with the space shower. For reasons unknown to science this morning the water came out of the shower head instead of the rain ceiling I was stuck with yesterday.
We packed up and checked-out of the BnB and headed further west to the Very Large Array at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The wind was intense and as we climbed, it got much colder, down into the low sixties in the highway.
George decided to take off his roof while we were stuck in construction traffic.
And about a quarter mile later, the combination of drizzle and cold prompted him to put it back together again.
The Very Large Array (VLA) was really awesome. The clouds parted as we arrived so we got a good view into the distance. Each of the satellite dishes in the array can be moved around on train tracks in a “Y” shape out from the center. We saw the array in its narrowest configuration, about 1 or 2 miles across. The widest configuration puts the farthest dishes at the full extent of the 11 mile tracks, making the equivalent of a 22 mile radius satellite for highest resolution imagery. We walked around, read signs, took a million pictures (with our real cameras because cell phones aren’t allowed), and looked at some of the documentation of what the array has studied.
Then we took off for the Mount Withington Lookout and peak in the Cibola National Forest, leaving the Volvo behind at the VLA Visitor Center parking. As we approached the turn off for the dirt road, the fog rolled in heavily and it started to rain again. I think all three of us were mildly nervous about it, but no one wanted to say anything about it, so we kept going. How bad could it be?
As we crossed the plains and started to climb up into the mountains, the fog started to lift slightly, giving us hope. About two miles intro the drive, the rain stopped and the fog blew off and left us with a pretty stunning picnic spot.
The road today was only slightly more challenging than yesterday’s drive, and totally beautiful in a completely different way. The VLA was in an area almost reminiscent of a grassy Death Valley with vast open plains. On the way up to the lookout, we passed what looked like parts of western Colorado with pine and aspen trees and stunning mountain views; then we drove through rocky hills with juniper trees and shrubs that kinda reminded me of central Texas. The we made it up to the lookout tower! And if you’ve ever played Firewatch, this was Delilah’s lookout, to a tee, complete with that circular map table in the center.
And I definitely didn’t crawl through the gate at the bottom of the stairs to get a look inside…
While we were there, the fog rolled back in swallowed up the lookout in the clouds as the temperature dropped into the 40s.
After hanging out there for a shivering snack stop and poking around the place, we drove on a little ways to Towers Peak, which, as it turns out, was not a peak? The road just kept going, there were no trailheads going up, not really sure what that atlas marker meant other than “it’s time to call it a day, attempt a 3-point-turn on this mountain track, and head back.”
But we took a different road back down through Bear Trap Canyon, this drive ended up looking very Pacific Northwest with tall, dense redwood-esque trees. The road alternated between silky smooth sandy dirt road and mildly rocky bits that would pop up by surprise, but it was an amazing tour in light rain. And the canyon was wide enough that flash flooding was probably not a serious risk… probably.
By this point, it was quite late in the afternoon. The VLA Gift Shop, where the Volvo spent the day bored and being rained on, was due to close shortly. We hadn’t exactly warned the facility why a vehicle would be left in their parking lot either. Also we still had to drive to Roswell tonight, about 4 hours from there. So we made quick time, as best we could, and rescued the Volvo right as: a) the VLA visitor center manager was getting in her car to leave and b) extremely heavy rainfall I wouldn’t have wanted to offroad through started over Mount Withington and the canyon we just came from.
We took a few more photos before pulling out and then headed straight for Roswell with minimal stopping. The first half of the drive featured heavy rainfall, but as we drove over the Capitan Pass, the rain subsided leaving only the intense disco strobe lights amount of lightning in all directions around us. The lightning never let up the whole way into Roswell, probably to provide visual cover for the UFOs canvassing the area.
