It has been a week since we got back from our New Mexico Memorial Day weekend roadtrip. We did so much in a really short time. We left Denver Day zero (Friday May 27th) after work. We drove like possessed people to get to Raton NM. We got to the Motel 6 at about 1am. It was a good idea since we travelled 1750 miles in that weekend.
Next day (Saturday) we had our breakfast on the road and headed for Roswell. I’ll do a separate post about Roswell.
After Roswell we headed for Carlsbad (the Town) where we found a nice Motel to quickly check in as all the motels were rapidly filling up. That is where I did my post because we unexpectedly found wifi.
I’ll do a separate post on Carlsbad Caverns.
Next morning went to Guadalope National Park for a look see and some photographs. Then back to Carlsbad Caverns for a trip into the caves. If you are claustraphobic as I am do not spend too long down there. I had about 3 hours down there (we were photographing) and I found it about an hour too long (and a very unpleasant hour at that.)
After exiting the caves we did a massive drive to White Sands National Monument. We wanted to get there for sunset and take pictures. There were stacks of people so it was a bit of a challenge to compose photo’s without all the people in it.
Here is a photo I took at White Sands National Monument:
We got a little side tracked on our way to White Sands by a very pretty looking storm. We almost did a chase (which just shows you how chase starved we have become.)
Kevin has really impressive photo’s of it. We drove to Artesia to try and find a WiFi connection since we had no data to go on. I insisted that we at least get more data before heading off on a massive drive. I thought studying the storm that hail was likely. I did not think it would go tornadic – just a hunch- and I could see no sign of rotation, but very nice updrafts, and mammalus clouds (which are a sign of strong convection within the storm cell.)
The photograph doesn’t really show the mammalus clouds but does show the cloud tower and a very nice precip column. We stopped off the road at one point and I could feel some nice strong gusts and smell the approaching storm. It did not have the same smell as the Kansas storms (go figure) but it sure was pretty.
