American Armed Forces Museum

Memorial Day weekend we visited the American Armed Forces Museum, and are so glad we did!  It is inspirational not only for the high quality displays, but for the dedication of the volunteers working toward their mission to preserve, protect and perpetuate the honor of those who served!

The museum is small, but houses an extensive collection!  The volunteers research veterans buried in Otero County cemetaries, and have compiled volumes of pictures and information.  They keep flags on the veteran's gravesites throughout the year, and have even replaced worn headstones. 

The uniforms are amazingly crisp, clean, and well displayed.  The care taken with the uniforms honors the military troops that wore them!  

It was brought to our attention that the each individual bar on the left sleeve of this uniform represents 6 months in captivity! 

This is a nice display of field office equipment. 

This is a soldier's bunk and gear. 

We were glad to learn of Sargeant Willie N. Estrada and the work the American Armed Forces Museum volunteers have done to honor his valor and memory.

The museum volunteers are creating a large peace park next to the museum. 

Even in its early stages of development, it is gorgeous! 

The American Armed Forces Museum volunteers have excelled in achieving their mission to preserve, protect and perpetuate the honor of those who served!  Be sure to visit the American Armed Forces Museum while in Alamogordo.  They are located at 144 US Hwy. 82, and are open Tuesday-Saturday 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m..  Admission is free. 

White Sands National Monument, NM

White Sands National Monument is located on Highway 70 15 miles southwest of Alamogordo.  The drive is through flat desert part of which is in the White Sands Missile Range.  At times White Sands National Monument and Highway 70 are closed due to military tests!

After miles of flat desert the white dunes seem to just appear out of nowhere!

Be sure to stop by the visitors center to watch a brief free movie explaining how the white gypsum dunes are formed and about the wildlife that lives on them.   If you visit White Sands National Monument, be sure to check out their website for planned events. They offer a variety of guided hikes during the day and evening, as well as full moon bike rides! Admission to the park was only $3.00 per person and the receipt was good for at least 5 more consecutive days! 

One of the first things you'll notice besides the wide expanse of white are the interesting ripples created by the wind!  Walking on the gypsum barefoot is encouraged!  It is said not to get hot underfoot even in the heat of the day, as it is gypsum and not like regular sand.  It looks very soft, but is surprisingly firm to walk on.

There are other surprises to discover, too! 

As you progress further into the dunes, the road turns from blacktop to plowed gypsum!  It's startling to hear the ranger say that this will happen, but don't worry, as the moistened gypsum is like cement.  The loop through the park is only 8 miles.  The white sands actually cover 300 square miles! 

There is a large picnic area with space age looking shelters!  The strange surroundings combined with these shelters will make you feel like you are on another planet!  There are grills, tables, trash receptacles, and restrooms, so enjoy a picnic while at the park!  A tent camping area is also available within the park!  An overnight stay would be an interesting experience! 

Bring a sled and enjoy some dune sledding on the dune of your choice!  The visitor center gift shop sells new disc sleds for $15 and will buy them back at a portion of the original price.  Used sleds are also sold. 

Here is a synopsis of what we learned about the formation of the dunes and the plants that survive on them.  Gypsum leaches into the water flowing down out of the gypsum rich mountains.  The water settles into land locked lakes that eventually dry out.  Gypsum crystals are left behind.  The strong desert winds break the crystals into flakes and blows them along breaking them into increasingly smaller sizes.  The crystals start out opaque to clear, and take on the white color from the scuffing that occurs as they bounce along.

Don't be fooled by the plants you see atop the dunes!  They may appear that their seeds blew in and established themselves there.  The truth is that many grew with the dune as it increased in size.  Some of these Yuccas have plant growth going 30 feet deep!  When the dune eventually moves on, the Yucca is left without support for its full height and will topple over and die.  

Some plants get their roots solidly deep into a dune.  When the dune blows onward, the plant is able to sustain itself by pulling moisture into its own foothold of sand!  The dunes within the interior of the park are reported to advance up to 15 feet a year!  The perimeter dunes only move a few inches due to the surrounding desert vegetation. 

Regardless of understanding how the white sand dunes came to be, we left the park in awe of a place like this existing on Earth!          

 

 

 

Alamogordo Museum of History

The Alamogordo Museum of History is small, but packed full of nice displays.  Admission is free, which fits our budget perfectly!  We enjoyed our visit and highly recommend you stop in, too!  It is located in the same building as the Visitor's Center.

One of the main attractions at the museum is this 47 star flag commemorating the addition of New Mexico as a state on January 6, 1912.  Because Arizona became the 48th state the very next month on February 14th, an official 47 star flag was never adopted.  According to the brochure flags are only adopted in July.  The 47 star flag came about when a flag making company jumped the gun in production!  This 47 star flag and only one other is known of.  The other flag is housed at the Palace of Governors in New Mexico's capital city of Santa Fe.  

This museum visit seemed to be an exercise in vocabulary and photography techniques!  Here is a display of atlatls.  There's a scrabble word for you!  An atlatl is an Aztec word for spear thrower.  I wasn't aware there were spear throwers!  A spear thrower or atlatl facilitates the throwing of a spear by making it go further and faster!  Not really sure how these atlatls work, though.   

This is a nice piece for grinding corn.  It is called a metate y mano.  The metate is the rock slab and the mano is the hand held grinding stone.  The small round stone is lighter in weight and smoother.  It appeared as though it would be used to grind the corn into a powder.  

It's a concretion!  Is that a fancy word for petrified dinosaur cow pie???

This is an Internet picture of Bowling Ball Beach in Mendocino County, California.  These are concretions!  A concretion is defined as a compact mass of sedimentary rock formed by the precipitation of mineral cement within the spaces between the sediment grains.  Concretions form within layers of sedimentary strata that have already been deposited.  The concretionary cement often makes the concretion harder and more resistant to weathering than the host stratum.  Concretions are most often ovoid or spherical, but can be irregular in shape, too.  Concretions!  That's definitely something I hadn't heard of!    

I'm proud of capturing this picture covered in glass!  You can't put your camera against the glass to cut out glare like when taking a picture of a room display through Plexiglas.  The overhead fluorescent lights created a wide bright band across the glass and other images were reflected in the glass when shooting straight into the picture.  The same happened shooting from the side.  Technique:  Squat down low and shoot upward!

 

This picture is depicting Buffalo Soldiers.  After the Civil War, 12,000 Black American soldiers fought in the regular army in the Indian wars of the West.  They were assigned to four all black regiments, the 9th and 19th Calvary, and the 24th and 25th Infantry.  The nickname Buffalo Soldiers was a badge of honor conferred by their Indian foes.  The name referred to the troop's fighting spirit, which was like the sacred buffalo in stamina and strength!            

This is a very classy desk set complete with quill pen holder, ink well, blotter, and ash tray!  Are you of an age to have used this type pen and a jar of ink at school?  I'm 61 and I never used this type pen when in school, but got to use the quill pen with its own ink cartridge for awhile!  We felt very clever saving on the cost of ink cartridges, by refilling the pen's cartridge using a jar of ink and a hypodermic needle!  The desks in the elementary school I attended still had a hole in the desk tops for an ink well!          

I remember them all!  It's kind of scary, when things you grew up with start showing up in museums of history!  Roy says not to get any ideas about wearing a "Fragile, do not touch sign" like we see on things of our age on display!  That man reads my mind!  ;-)