Warm today. Windy today. The warm part probably will not hold, but I suspect the windy season is nearly upon us. I did my sunset stroll last evening in gale force winds, at least it seemed they were gale force. My voice did hold up, but my hair sure got messed up with all that wind. We had a low of 5 degrees on Wednesday morning; so, last night’s temps of not getting below freezing were very welcomed.

On Sunday afternoon there was a ranger-led trip to Lake Lucero. Since one has to cross missile range lands to access the lake, it is offered only once a month and has to be lead by NPS staff. Eighty people signed up for the trip, and so Shannon went along to help with crowd control. I stayed back to do crowd control at our motor home. Tuzi. I’m not sure who had the hardest job.

Lake Lucero is part of a much larger geologic lake bed where water coming off the surrounding mountains collected. That earlier lake was 1,600 square miles in size; Lake Lucero at its height is about 10 square miles. What you see in the distance is Lake Lucero. At this time of the year it is a dry lake bed or “playa.”

The attraction of Lake Lucero is the selenite crystals that are found there. This is and was the source of the gypsum sand dunes. Water laden with gypsum coming off the surrounding mountains collected in the lake, and as the water evaporated the gypsum coming out of solution crystallized to form selenite crystals. It is the breakdown of these crystals that form the sand grains that build the dunes. So, going to Lake Lucero is like hiking to Mecca and seeing the Holy Grail. Sorry for mixing religions, but you get the picture… The next trip is toward the end of February, and I’ll get to go while Shannon gets to wrestle puppy…if she’s up to it.

North of White Sands closer to the mountain range on the east side of the basin (Sacramento Mountains) is a BLM site called Three Rivers. I’m perplexed now why they call it that. No matter. A trip to Three Rivers was one of our off-duty day trips. It’s a site that is full of petroglyphs from the Jornada Mogollon culture that was in the area during the 14^th century, along with all the other cultures that we visited. However, unlike the Ancestral Puebloans (formerly called Anasazi) cultures, there is no evidence where the descendants of the Jornada Mogollon went to. The fate of this culture is a mystery.

The site has over 20,000 petroglyphs along the hiking trails, and unlike most other places, you are encouraged to get off the trail to look more closely at the obvious petroglyphs and to find other petroglyphs that are not so obvious. So, the site is very unique in being able to ramble about and get close to petroglyphs. This petroglyph was one of the last ones we inspected closely and it surprised us. If we didn’t know any better we would have said Paul Bunyan had visited the Jornada Mogollon people and brought along a nice balsam fir from Minnesota. Ah, Minnesota. We just can’t get away from it.

As usual, we spent way more time at this site than necessary. However, I must say, we spent more time talking with the site hosts than we did exploring for petroglyphs. The couple was full time RVing and had been at it since the 1990’s. They had been at this site for two years. That’s two years, 365 days each year. They loved the peace and quiet. The BLM had such a nice site for their motor home and supplied everything even a daily stipend that they had no desire to move. So, we are now tuned into looking at BLM volunteer opportunities. So many places to experience, so little time. Almost takes the fun and feel out of retirement. Too much to do.

So it’s sometimes good to be reminded that life is more than getting out and doing. It calls for a nap once in awhile. This is a rare moment in Tuzi’s life. She’s actually still. Celebrate moments like this. Um, I have to stop now. It’s time for my nap.