Day 4 - by Rob

Day 4

Breakfast at the Super-8-Alamogordo featuring make-it-yerself waffles in an electric contraption, and then off across the 50 miles of Tularosa basin. Mountains on each side and a few about 30 miles south and just flat plain to the north. A beautiful desert morning, went past the huge Holloman air force base, and then about half later, south off the highway for a few miles to the still fully operational White Sands Missile Range base. It was first a test site for the captured and rebuilt German V2 missiles in 1945 and has flown about every US developed and many foreign missies since. The range is about 40 miles wide and extends over a hundred north from the range base. There is a great museum with many detailed exhibits and relics from the whole history, including Trinity site on the northern end and the space shuttle landing strip, used for much training and once for a reentry landing in 1982. There were a few exhibits of late 50s technology which would have been co-incident with Jim's work visit here in 1959. 

Then a two thousand foot long straight climb up off the basin floor on highway 70, up and over San Augustin pass and a spectacular climb down into Las Cruces in the Rio Grande vally oither side. We had a lunch and a gawk at New Mexico State Uni campus and then dropped off the car and waited for the 4:30pm Greyhound on a hot & duty strip mall stop.

The bus was comfortable enough, and the fellow passengers mainly fully accredited graduates of Hard Times College. We change buses after a one hour wait at El Paso and the overnight leg was quite full.
Ellie and I had to sit separately, which was OK and consequently we mixed a bit more with out seat co-shares. I got to speak a bit to a young guy trying to find better job hopes in Houston after no luck in Modesto. I did not share my "Wall Street" job description! We were passport checked by Border Police at El Paso, and then were late night stop-&-searched on a roadblock on Interstate 10 by much more gunned up Border troops. Off the bus, form three lines with guards at front & rear. Dogs having a good old sniff about the baggage and police all over the bus interior. Once guy was led away in handcuffs and then on throught the night east on I-10. The Greyhound routes are carefully chosen to join up the hard luck parts of many American towns! Several stops at services through the night, then a 2 hour wait at dawn for a swap at a much nicer San Antonio office and finally into beautiful Austin.