Traversing New Mexico

 Central New Mexico is awesome!

While Cyndee and I have spent plenty of time in northern New Mexico backpacking in the Wheeler Peak wilderness area and exploring Albuquerque southeast to Roswell, Carlsbad and Los Alamos we had never been in the Ft Sumner and Milan areas.  It ranged from rustic, very rustic, to breathtaking.

The last blog left off with us departing Granger, TX for Sweetwater, TX.  Our RV park accommodations were basic but the stay was short.

All dirt and gravel, backed up to a truck stop and adjacent 
to a very active freight rail line.  BUT, level and plenty of room to 
park all our equipment.

Sweetwater was a little shy on things to do.  We spent about two hours going through a W.A.S.P. museum (Women's Airforce Service Pilots).

The W.A.S.P. museum encompassed two hangars.  One covered the story of the women with well appointed displays and artifacts, the other static displays of aircraft and support equipment.

Abilene was less than an hour away so we popped over there and went to Frontier Texas!.  Another museum that told the story of Texas starting with the Jurassic period up to the present.  We kind of expected a cheesy, low budget operation but were very surprised to find it to be one heck of a museum. 

Entrance to Frontier Texas!.  Those metal cut-out bison are all wind vanes.
They would all move in unison as the wind changed, just as they would running 
across the plains.

The museum is well appointed with period displays and artifacts but with 
a touch of technology.  There were hologram storytellers throughout, each with multiple stories you could choose for them to tell. 

The drama in this diorama was palpable.
Standing next to it you could feel the power of these animals.

Our time for touristing ran out quickly, preparations for moving in the morning had to be done.

And with that move came the next stop, Ft Sumner, NM.

Valley View Mobile Home and RV Park, Ft Sumner, NM

Our campground was adjacent to Main Street with wide dirt roads and spacious gravel RV pads.  There was no problem parking our entire caravan in one spot.  Utilities were good but the water pressure was really high (80+psi) and put our eleven year old water pressure regulator out to pasture.  The diaphragm ruptured and that was that.  We filled our on-board fresh water tank and operated off our water pump to protect the plumbing.  Rebuilding the old pressure regulator, now out of production, was going to be more expensive and complicated than buying a new one.  Let the research begin for a replacement.

Another thing about our campground, it was owned by the same family that owned and operated the Billy The Kid Museum about a block away.  In fact, after setting up we went down to the museum to "check in" and pay for our stay.

BTK Museum.  A little on the rustic side but long on history, 
artifacts and old west memorabilia.

The next morning we set out to see what Ft Sumner had to offer.  Turns out the list was short.  But what they had proved to be impressive.  The BTK Museum was way more than we thought it would be.  The relative small store front belies the cavernous interior that is filled to the brim with literature and artifacts, some famous, some not.  But there was lots and lots to see.

The museum had displays that included the "modern" era.

The main attraction; Billy The Kid, aka William Bonney.
But other famous characters, Pancho Villa and Pat Garrett
 to name a couple, were also featured.

The gun room has rifles dating from the flintlock
times to cap and ball to modern center fire.  The main
attraction is BTK's personal rifle.

If you wind through the entire museum you will have seen more than 60,000 items.  We tried but I think we became saturated at about 50,000 and had to head for the gift shop.

Our next stop was a memorial, El Bosque Redondo (The Tree Circle).  

El Bosque Redondo Memorial

What an education.  This place was a memorial for a "trail of tears" we never learned about in school.  While very familiar with Cherokee having their native lands taken and being marched from the Carolinas and Georgia to Oklahoma, we had never heard about the Diné and Navajo being rounded up and marched to New Mexico.

The memorial building is beautiful and the displays do an excellent job telling the story of this dark period of our history.  So much so that Cyndee came out of the memorial crying.

That was enough for us.  We headed back to town to find a bite to eat (there were two places open) and then started prepping for tomorrows move to Milan, NM.