The Space History museum was very good. One starts by taking the elevator to the fourth floor. Then one descends by ramps through three more floors of exhibits, ending back at the ground floor and gift shop.

We saw many models of spacecraft, artifacts of various kinds, including flags that went to the moon, flight suits, and the rather ubiquitous moon rock.

One outstanding feature is the “International Space Hall of Fame.” The inductees range from astronauts and scientists, both modern and ancient to NASA officials, whose names will be familiar to anyone who watched the various US space shots of the 60s and 70s. The earliest inductee, as near as I can tell, is Hipparchus, followed by Sir Isaac Newton. It was fun to identify folks I recognized and learn about those of whom I had never heard.

On our way back, we stopped at the White Sands National Monument. Though we didn’t leave the visitor center area, we got the sense of the place, and saw a bit of the crushed gypsum that makes up the white sands of the area. Since the sand is crushed gypsum, rather than quartz, it does not heat up in the sun, and it’s possible to sled on the dunes!

There is a museum and “Missile Park” associated with the White Sands Missile Range, but we were tired, and did not stop.

All in all, a great day.

This morning, I went to Shul at Chabad of El Paso. Rabbi Greenberg has a fine Chabad House going. Had a good service, got called to the Torah, and we had a fine kiddush afterwards.

Returning home permitted a nice Shabbat nap.

We went out to dinner at Pullaro’s Italian Restaurant. It was very nice.

Monday we are moving on to El Paso.

The ride along I-10 for the past day or so has been pretty dreary. Lots of open space, very little development between towns. Occasionally there is a store for tourists, usually preceded by 20 miles of billboards. New Mexico allows the sale of fireworks, but so far, I’ve resisted.

We were expecting mail at General Delivery, but the package was not there yet. A necessary evil of traveling and relying on mail forwarding. We booked into the Elks Lodge for the night, and possibly the weekend. I need to do some work, so we were not planning on traveling at all until mid-next week. Whether we stayed in Las Cruces or El Paso was an open question. Until I visit the post office, it remains open.

After the post office debacle, and a good lunch (love those green chili peppers) we booked into the Elks Lodge and then hit the Las Cruces Railroad Museum. The museum, I’m sorry to say, is pretty basic. The highlight is the two HO layouts. I have some photos, which will be added to this posting in the next few days.

We’ve reached quite a milestone. When we get to El Paso, either tomorrow or next week, we will have come more than half the distance from Los Angeles to Livingston, Texas.

Here are some stats:

• We’ve been on the road for ten days.
• We’ve traveled for six of those days, and stayed put for four of them. A few travel days were very short.
• We have stayed in two commercial campgrounds and four Elks Lodges.
• Our average cost per night is $23.70, compared with our budge of $20/night.  We need eight nights at $15/night to get under our budgetary average.
• I don’t have fuel figures handy, but we seem to be averaging 12 mpg.

We plan to stay in either Las Cruces or El Paso until about Wednesday of next week.

Lordsburg had an interesting reputation. If you got your info from reading traveler reviews, you would get the impression that driving by without stopping was the correct approach. I refused. I said that there must be a redeeming feature. In fact, I thought the place was delightful. They had a nice downtown, friendly people, and a good lunch at Kranberry’s Restaurant. The KOA Kampground seems to have a bad rep, and we didn’t visit it, but on the west end of town we spied a gravel field with hookups and a sign saying $20/night. This does not seem to be in any of the books or web sites.

On to Deming. We had stopped at the tourist info booth at the Lordsburg rest area and picked up a brochure for the Deming Luna Mimbres Museum. Built in the old Armory, this is a definite must-see, with collections of dolls, antique vehicles, military memorabilia, art, china, silver and household effects. It’s associated with the Customs House on the other side of the street, which contains an exhibit of the use of the building as a Port of Entry from 1852 to 1900 (or so.) The rest of the house is dedicated to showing antiques and artifacts of earlier times. All well worth seeing. Note, you’re standing in the middle of history. All this is part of the Gadsden Purchase.

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We’re camped at the Dream Catcher RV Park, run by the Escapees organization, of which we’re members. I met a family in the rec room that is traveling to Carlsbad with their children. They’re full-time on the road, and homeschooling. I recommended that school be in session at the museum tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow we’ll go get our mail in Las Cruces, and overnight, either there or in El Paso, Texas!

It was a frustrating day driving, with some road work, some mistakes, like getting stuck in an outlet mall instead of finding a freeway entrance, etc. I need to learn to take things easier.

Since this was a travel day, here’s a chance for me to share a photo of our home, rigged for travel:

Here's a shot of our rig, bicycle, truck and trailer and barely visible spouse, ready to hit the road.

]]> http://www.greenberg.org/archives/389/feed 2 http://www.greenberg.org/archives/337 http://www.greenberg.org/archives/337#comments Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:16:56 +0000 Ed http://www.greenberg.org/?p=337 Today is Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating the events of the Book of Esther.  There are four mitzvot associated with Purim:

• Hear the reading of the Megillah — The Book of Esther.
• Give Charity
• Give gifts of food
• Eat, Drink and be Merry (I like this one :)

This is the second year that we’ve attended a Megillah reading at a Chabad while traveling. The first was two years ago, in Las Vegas.

We are in Mesa, Arizona, and we attended at the Chabad of Mesa, located in the home of Rabbi and Mrs. Blotner. The Rabbi and his wife were quite busy, so I didn’t get to talk to him much. I think they got about 50 people that evening.  Rabbi Blotner was in costume, a Chinese Food takeout container. A photo of him without the Megilla is in the album shown below. The large photo here is of the Rabbi holding the Megilla open to be seen. It’s a parchment scroll, made similarly to the Torah Scroll. There are five megillot. Esther is one, Ruth is another. Also, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. Each is read on a particular Jewish holy day.

We got started at about 8. The event was called for 7:30, so it started on-time, as measured by Chabad time :) Seriously though, the Rabbi chose to wait for several folks to show up who had been instrumental in putting the event on. Not only was there a Megillah Reading, but also a Chinese dinner and music.  The problem is that Chabad can’t go down to the Golden Wok down the road and get their Chinese food. This dinner was strictly kosher, and was prepared by volunteers. The food was fabulous. There was also a band, on guitar, mandolin, hammered dulcimer, recorder and drums. Jewish melodies were played, food was served, the kids played basketball. There was also a juggler.

The whole event was marvelous. I was made most welcome, had a fine time, and would love to get to know Rabbi and Mrs. Blotner better.

We had breakfast about ten miles past the diverge from I-10, at Vicksburg, at the Kofa Cafe. We’re told that Kofa refers to the Kofa Mine, which in turn refers to King-Of-Arizona. The cafe served up a superior breakfast, and the environment was pure joy. There was a map on the wall with pins so you could mark your hometown. For the first time, I put a pin in Livingston TX. There were about ten pins there already.  There was a mural on the wall that taught us that we were in the McMullen Valley.

Sitting in the cafe, looking at the mural, we decided to continue on 60 to Wickenburg, then down to Phoenix that way. We did. We went through Salome. Then on past a few other wide spots in the road (with apologies to the fine people who live there) until we got to Wickenburg. This was a bustling town, but I couldn’t find anyplace to park the trailer and walk around, so we continued. From Surprise on to the junction with AZ-101, we encountered heavy construction traffic, but once we got through that, we were good to go all the way to Mesa.

We’re parked now for four nights, at the Orangewood Shadows RV Resort. This is a rather fancy place, with a mix of  mobile homes and RVers on long-term stays. We were lucky to get a spot, here, and probably lucky to get one in the Phoenix area at all. I was getting worried. Orangewood is a not-twisty little maze of roads, trailers and motor homes, all different, yet all alike. We are located at the very bottom of the image, in the middle of that bottom row.  This place has a bunch of amenities, which are listed on the page linked above. I probably won’t see any of them. At $38/night, this is way over my budget, but we want to be here, so we chose to pay.

Once we arrived and checked in, the park provided an employee to lead us to the site with his golf cart, and then direct me as I backed in. He did a barely adequate job. Roseann would have been a better backer.  It had been a stressful day, what with the traffic, and with the need to get lunch in an area where there was very difficult RV parking, and I was glad to get in and take a much needed nap.

We traveled east through San Bernadino all the way to Indio, where we stopped for fuel, a grocery store run, and then lunch at Panda Express — Roseann’s favorite. Then back on the road bound for Quartzsite, AZ. We chose Quartzsite since Blythe, CA seemed to have only a bunch of 55 and over RV “resorts.” We just wanted “a flop for the night.” I was also really jazzed about crossing the state line. At about 2:00, we did so, and I noticed that my cell phone now said 3:00. We changed our clocks and watches.

Quartzsite is a strange place. It’s a sleepy town that almost totally shuts down in the summer, due to the brutal heat. In January and February, however, it comes alive with RV travelers. There is a large gem and mineral show and sale as well as many flea markets selling just about everything. Several large RV dealers open temporary sales offices. Many RVers make it a point to meet here each year to catch up on their friendships. Since Quartzsite is surrounded by  BLM land, the countryside is dotted with RVs, where people camp without hookups for weeks at a time. Clubs have  annual gatherings here. It’s a giant party.

Sticks in the mud that we are, we registered at an RV park ($22 with tax) and set out to get the flavor of the town. Most of the vendors are gone, but there are some die-hards. We walked around a gathering of mineral vendors. I took some photos.

I wanted to hit some of the more general flea market booths, but 5 PM snuck up on us, and everybody rolled down their awnings and went home. So we took the hint, and went home ourselves.

About 8 PM, Mountain Time, I made fish and chips for dinner. Now that this blog entry is done, I’m going to hit the hay.