Before the Jeep had its mechanical failure, we drove yesterday through New Mexico. We stopped and had a piece of pie in Pie Town, and saw some really natural and pretty landscapes.
The best thing we saw during our long drive was the Very Large Array, which is a configuration of telescopes for studying the cosmos. The science behind it is interesting, but even better is the spectacular site of 27 big white dishes splayed out over the landscape all pointed at the same place in the sky. Mankind has a handful of technological achievements that stand out, and this is one of them.
Ashleigh and I turned off of route 60 to drive the access road out to the array, where there is a small visitor center with museum-like displays. When we arrived, a family of four exited, and we were the only people there. Not even a receptionist accompanied us. We enjoyed the displays, and we would have taken the self-guided walking tour if we weren't confronted by a big thunder storm! Lightening was crashing on both sides of us, so we took refuge in the Jeep. The weather passed over us for about thirty minutes, with big sloppy raindrops and also hail which accumulated on the roadside.
Because of my sickness, I was zonked by the late afternoon. Ashleigh took over driving and I navigated. By the end of the nite we had made it to Cloudcroft, where we parked in a United Methodist church parking lot and slept the nite. In the morning we drove across a high desert plain. It wasn't until we dropped down out of the plain that we hit mechanical trouble.
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