Border Patrol

We had never been to New Mexico before, except to drive across it on our way to Oaxaca. It's nice to stop and see a few things.

Rusty's RV Ranch isn't much to look at, but it's quite a comfortable place to stay. It's perhaps a ten minute drive from Portal, the largest nearby town. Portal is on the eastern edge of the Chiricahua mountain range and lots of birds hang out in the foothills. Some of the residents feed the birds, so the easiest way to find birds is to hang around the feeders.

Rusty's RV Ranch sits on a very flat stretch of desert in a valley between some low mountains. You can see for quite a distance and there isn't a tree anywhere in sight, other than some mesquite or maybe creosote bushes. Actually, that's not quite fair. Rusty has planted a few trees, but it's winter and (except when they block my view of the Eta Carina nebula :-) the trees aren't really noticeable in the overall landscape. The office has a laundromat, a shower and a giant hot tub that they call a "spa". Rusty has a garden with a fountain that attracts quite a few birds. It doesn't hurt that some of her tenants also put out birdseed. It's quite dark at night, except that every so often a car will drive along one of the nearby roads.

There are some astronomy developments nearby. Jack Newton's "Arizona Sky Village" is over toward Portal. Granite Gap is a bit to the north and "Rancho Hidalgo" is just getting set up a little bit to the southeast. I was curious about what the astronomy developments were like, so we drove by Rancho Hidalgo. The people we spoke with were very friendly. Gene Turner, the developer, very kindly offered to let us onto his land to hike to some caves where there are pictographs. He also offered to let us check out the skies through scopes at Rancho Hidalgo, if there weather improved. Alas, it hasn't, really. Tonight will be better than forecast earlier (clear or partly cloudy instead of cloudy), but seeing will still be bad.. Tomorrow we're leaving. It's too bad we won't get the chance, since Gene has a 30" scope which is big enough to show colours in quite a few nebulae.

I have put some pictures from our hike up at https://picasaweb.google.com/100719842898341494426/20120121Pictographs#

Apparently the worst light pollution at Rancho Hidalgo tends to come from the Border Patrol, who occasionally feel the need to safeguard astronomers from dark skies. The border patrol certainly makes their presence obvious. We may have been x-rayed by the border patrol while driving down the I-10 west of Las Cruces, a rather long way from the border. We had to stop while in the midst of their sensor array, which, if it was x-rays, could mean we got a rather large dose. It looked like they were building a much larger vehicle inspection facility at the site.

I went by Granite Gap and the Arizona Sky Village today. Granite Gap isn't actually developed yet. When completed, it will be a moblile home and RV park. Quite a few observatory buildings are in place, but the RV pads didn't appear to be laid out yet. There was at least one "Park Model" set up; that appears to be a mobile home. The existing Park model is 400 square feet; new ones will apparently be 450 square feet. The observatory sites should be reasonably well protected from headlights on Highway 80, but headlights on the 145 might be visible. RV pads are $2500 for a 99 year lease (until development starts, after which they will cost more).

The Arizona Sky Village is quite a different sort of development. Lots are quite large. Most appear to have both a home and an observatory building. The road in is washboarded to an extent that is very annoying in a small car, though would probably be OK for a pickup. Houses are far enough apart that it doesn't look like a community: more like a gathering for iconoclasts and hermits. But that could be an illusion; it's really hard to tell what a community is like just by driving past.

If seeing had been better this week, I might have been (foolishly) tempted by a pad at Granite Gap. Foolish, because it wouldn't be very convenient for us to come down to New Mexico for any length of time for most of the next ten years at least, and who knows what our lives might be like by then. It would be investing against an uncertain future. The reason it might have been tempting anyway is simply that the price is low and the skies are likely to stay dark, which isn't true of many other places in the US and Canada that aren't also very cold in the winter.

The countryside here is very pretty. The Chiricahua mountains have lots of interesting rock formations. There are many cave sites that were once occupied. There is lots of good hiking and many sites to view the 300+ bird species that live or pass through the area. Having visited once, we may well return.

Tomorrow we are off to Albequerque, where we will likely stop to buy new tires. Our car still has its orignal equipment tires, which have never been very good. They are now more than three years old and getting rather worn, so it's time to replace them before we try driving through mountains (or even across prairie) in the snow. We've decided to get all season radials for now and we'll probably buy chains once we're back in Canada.