Sunny and warm but often windy
284 miles
I was up at 7.50, and took advantage of the Hotel Blue's inclusive breakfast buffet, served in a bar lined with Route 66 memorabilia. I took a couple of photos of the hotel before leaving around 9.30, heading back onto I-25 heading southwards.
I learned from one of the local radio stations that south was an excellent direction in which to be going, since President Bush was visiting Santa Fe, an hour to the north of Albuquerque. With luck he'd have gone by the time I got there. Later that day I happened to catch some television footage of an anti-Bush protest, including a placard proclaiming that "A village in Texas has lost its idiot".
I turned off the interstate at Socorro, 78 miles to the south of Albuquerque, onto the main route through the town, a typical strip lined with motels, gas stations, chain restaurants and the like. I made a brief stop before taking a turning to the west in the town centre, heading for the Very Large Array.
Progress was a little slower as the road was single carriageway, taking a slightly twisty route through the mountains and the small town of Magdalena before heading onto the vast expanse of the Plains of San Agustin. It took around an hour to reach the turnoff for the VLA, where I stopped to take a couple of photographs before crossing double railway tracks and heading onto the site.
I parked and found to my disappointment that the Visitor Center was closed for refurbishment. I had not seen inside it when I visited as an observer and it would have been interesting to see how the place presents itself to the general public. I was however able to take a walking tour, guided by various strategically-placed signs.
The array is one of the foremost radio astronomy sites in the world, and comprises 27 25 metre (82ft) diameter steerable dishes mounted on concrete supports. These can be lifted to be moved around using a lifting engine running on twin railway tracks for maintenance or to change the spacing of the dishes (though this is not a task to be undertaken lightly as it takes a couple of weeks). The tracks form three arms, each 21km long, and there are four main configurations offering varying resolution to observers. As on my previous visit the telescopes were in their most compact configuration, with no disk more than 600m from the centre, although the following week they were scheduled to start moving the dishes to their widest spacing.
The tour took one up onto the upper-floor balcony of the control centre, offering excellent views of the arrays and the train tracks stretching into the distance, right up to the foot of the mountains which surround the plains. It also showed an area being in which an experimental receiver for the ALMA array planned for the high Atacama Desert in Chile.
Behind the control centre, I observed something moving in the grass. It revealed itself to have extremely long ears, and then hopped onto the path allowing me a good look and a chance to photograph it -- it was a jackrabbit, a larger (especially in the ear-department) cousin of the common cottontail.
Socorro was the nearest place around likely to harbour any decent eateries, so I headed back there for lunch. I stopped at a Subway around 2.00, next to the Denny's I had frequented in 1994. I chose a beef sandwich and a drink and was told that for no extra money I could include chips, what sort did I want? I was slightly taken aback for a moment before realising they meant crisps, and asked for a mesquite barbecue flavoured pack.
After lunch I drove a couple of miles down to the centre of Socorro and parked by the town's San Miguel Mission, its origins dating back to the town's foundation in 1598 but the extant buildings largely dating from 1620. I took a brief look inside, finding the place deserted, then headed back to the freeway to continue south.
An hour or so further on, I turned off into the town formerly known as Hot Springs, but renamed Truth or Consequences in 1950. I stopped on Main Street outside the information centre, and went inside to collect a map of the town and ask for recommendations as to places to stay.
The information centre was housed in the same building as the the Geronimo Springs Museum, which contained various exhibits about the history of the town and the surrounding area. It also covered the town's name-change. ``Truth or Consequences'' was the name of a popular radio show in the 1940s and early 1950s, and for publicity in 1950 started looking for a small American town prepared to rename itself after the show in return for publicity and fund-raising opportunities, not to mention hosting the show's 10th anniversary edition. Several places volunteered, and Hot Springs was selected. While the show is long-gone, its host Ralph Edwards has been returning each year for the town's Fiesta.
I checked into the Charles Motel a short distance away, the room costing a very reasonable 33 dollars. The exterior was a little shabby but the room seemed fine. Soon after I decided to head out again, and attempted to lock the door behind me. This proved somewhat problematic owing to the door lock being rather past it, and after a few failed attempts at locking the door, the key jammed. I went back to the office to ask for assistance, and the proprietress eventually decided that the simplest thing to do was to move me into another room. This was larger, with a separate kitchen and proper air-conditioning rather than the ``swamp cooler'' of the first room, but most importantly the lock worked. Having moved my stuff across, I then succeeded in freeing the key of the first room and locking the door, but by then it was a bit late.
Five miles east of the town is Elephant Butte Lake, formed by the damming of the ``mighty'' Rio Grande in 1916. The lake and surrounding shores form a state park, widely used for a variety of recreational purposes. There used to be a road over the dam, but it appeared that this had been closed on security grounds. I stopped first to look at the dam from what was obviously deemed a safe distance. Nearby was a small restaurant and bar overlooking the lake, and a series of steps leading down to an extensive network of floating jetties and moorings. Marks on the surrounding cliffs made it evident that the water level of the reservoir fluctuated substantially. Directly ahead was the large rock after which the dam and lake are named, owing to its having a vague similarity to the shape of an elephant's head. (Butte, for the record, is pronounced as `bute'.)
I next stopped at a small visitor centre which explained the geology of the area, and again further around the shore for an alternative viewpoint, then returned to T or C, as the locals call it. I flicked through the TV channels, finding James Bond at another radio telescope (Arecibo in ``Goldeneye''), then went out in search of food.
The only nearby place listed in my guidebook proved to be closed, and there was nothing else on offer in the town centre save a couple of fast food establishments. I returned to the motel to collect the car, and headed northwards up the town's long motel strip to see what might be on offer. Perched upon a small hill beside the road, I spotted the neon sign of a Mexican restaurant, and turned off to investigate.
The place was fairly busy but service was relatively prompt. I chose skewers of steak, tomato, peppers and onions, served with rice and a salad. After a bit of a delay in paying, seemingly due to a shortage of change in the till, I returned to the motel. I did some plotting of my next moves, watched a little television and went to bed at 11.20.