New Mexico-Day 4

On Wednesday morning, we went back to White Sands and we took our log books to get the National Park Passport stamp added to our stamp collection. We spent most of the morning there, then headed back to Alamogordo to find a few letterboxes. The first one we found was FLY LIKE AN EAGLE. We had a bit of trouble at first, because I had the East/West directions reversed. Luckily, Blue Butterfly figured it out for us and we were able to stamp in!

Next, we attempted a box at the space center, but couldn't quite get the clues to work for us. Our next stop was a the Toy Train Museum. We decided to break out our lunch here. Again, we couldn't get find this letterbox, so we sat on the grass under a shade tree and ate our lunch.
Our next stop was TulaRosa. We drove about 15 miles to this town and found the library, where two boxes are located. We went into the library and asked for the first box and also asked for use of the internet while we were there. The friendly librarians were very accommodating. After stamping in and planning our box-finding route back home, we went outside to find the second box on the library grounds. Both of these boxes were great carves and fun finds!

We drove around the Village of TulaRosa a bit, then headed back to Alamogordo. On the way back, we stopped to see the World's Largest Pistachio, located at a pistachio farm. After visiting the pistachio store and the unique landmark, we continued on our route.
We had one more box to try and find in the area, so we made a small detour to nab it before getting back to the cabin. The ironic thing about this box, is that it is at a scenic overlook that we had stopped at on our way into town the first day. We didn't realize there was a box here ! So, we headed to find THE TUNNEL LB near High Rolls.

After we finally made it back to the cabin, two exhausted letterboxers, we rested for a while, then Blue Butterfly prepared dinner for us. While eating dinner, we could see that in the distance, there was a rain storm and we were graced with a beautiful rainbow.

New Mexico-Day Three

On the third day, we did not letterbox. We spent most of the day at White Sands National Monument. We had a wonderful time hiking a couple of trails, despite one of us getting sun burned. I won't say who it was. :-)

Lucy Locket

Flowers in the desert.

Lucy Locket and Blue Butterfly on one of the beautiful white sand dunes. This photo is courtesy of a park ranger who suffered from logorrhea.

This is our one-room cabin in Alamogordo. Move over, Bobby Flay, Blue Butterfly's at the grill tonight!

Headed West-Day One and Two

A few weeks ago, Blue Butterfly, PSGuru and I decided to take a trip out to White Sands, NM. A few days before the trip, PSGuru had a conflict come up, so BB and I went on without him. BB met me in Navarro County on Sunday, July 11, and we headed out west.

Our first stop was in Eastland to find Boots Tex's box OLD RIP. We had to bypass paying our respects to the Real Old Rip since it was Sunday, but we found the LB and were once again in awe of a BT carving. Boots' attention to detail is amazing.
After repacking Rip, we continued to head west toward Abilene. Here, we searched for and found FLITTER FLUTTER by Batty Girl. I can't remember if it was in Eastland or Abilene, but in one of those two cemeteries that we visited, we found the grave of the man who wrote the 40-Hour Work Week for Texas.

We made our way to Big Spring, where we spent the night. We decided not to set our alarms since we were on vacation. :-)We got up on Monday and continued our journey westward. First, however, we found a box by Maydelle Queen Bee in Big Spring called A DEAF ARTIFACT. Our next stop was in Andrews, TX. We made a stop in Andrews to find Astro D's box KIRBY WEST. She cleverly had the box made out of a pouch that was wrapped around a tree limb.

We finally made our way to New Mexico and drove through several small towns before finally winding our way into Cloudcroft. There were four letterboxes hidden on/near a roadside trail. THE CLOUD CLIMBING RAIL ROAD is a tribute to a railroad that used to run through Cloudcroft. We were only able to search for three out of four because by the time we stamped into #3, there were some workers from the Parks Department hanging out near the fourth box.

After packing up in Cloudcroft, we continued towards Alamogordo. We stopped after going through a mountain side tunnel to take a look at the scenic overlook, then finally made it to our destination!