This weekend, Richard, Nina and I went on a trip throuch south-central New Mexico. Nina and I left Los Alamos after a breakfast at Chiliworks and went to Santa Fe to pick up Richard at his parents' house. He had a new tent and sleeping bag which he had never used before and was anxious to.

Our first stop was REI in Albuquerque to stock up on a few supplies. I bought a pair of fleece pants so I can finally stop mooching off of Robin's, a windbreaker that will allow me to go out in the wind/rain without having to use my huge mountaineering parka shell, a couple of new bulbs for my caving headlamp, a stuff sack for my thermarest, a protective cover for my GPS, and a couple of dehydrated meals (chili-mac, of course).

Then it was on to Socorro for the Mud Bog, organized by Dan. The whole concept of the mud bog is somewhat ghetto and very redneck, but it was a blast. They had dug a long trench with a front-end loader and filled it with about 100,000 gallons of water to make a huge mud pit. Then people would take turns trying to drive their vehicles through the pit as fast as possible. Most of them were suped-up 4x4s, but there was the occasional silly entry like a beat-up conversion van and a subaru hatchback. In 2000, one of the entries was a snowmobile. The winner ended up being one of the new H2's, which I learned are actually just a modified Tahoe. We all got mud sprayed onto our clothes, hair, etc.

After saying hi to Dan, who was very busy overseeing the event, we were off to the Trinity Site for the first of its two public days of the year. As we drove there the weather deteriorated into a serious wind/sand storm. The wind was picking up so much loose dirt and sand from the desert basin that the visibility was drastically reduced. Richard and Nina had never been to Trinity before, so we did the full walking tour of the site. The wind really detracted from the event.

During the drive from Trinity to Carazozo, we were assaulted by a lot of tumbleweeds flying across the road in the high winds. One of them we hit seemed to have gotten stuck in the wheel well and was making a lot of noises. We drove by the Valley of Fires, where the caving regional was taking place. This was the same place that the last regional sucked at because of wind and dust storms. I guess I picked a good one not to go to.

At Carazozo, we looked under the car to see what was making all the noise and it turns out some of the plastic wheel-well walls had torn free of their mounting screws and were rubbing the wheel. I did a little surgery on it with Richard's knife and removed a few of the offending pieces of plastic. Not sure if that will have negative effects on the car, but Dan says it'll be fine.

At Whitesands, the weather hadn't improved. The campsites were curiously full, with only three available when we showed up at about 4:30pm. We went straight to campsite #7 and started setting up camp. Sand makes for lousy purchase on tent stakes. That combined with the extreme wind made for a challenge getting the tents up. Especially since Richard hadn't used his tent before and was therefore not very profcient with getting it set up. He didn't have stakes for his guy-lines which he desperately needed. It took far too long to get the tents up, but eventually everything was stable.

We ate the chili-mac I had just bought but cooking in the sandstorm meant that sand was in everything. By the time we were done with dinner it was 8:30pm and very dark. The star watching was sub-par because of the sand in the air. We went to bed early and got up at about 5:00am to watch the sun rise. It was unusually cold in the morning. Richard was somewhat disenfranchised with the whole trip and I think he wanted to just call it a day, so we packed up early and left without much in the way of hiking or dune-jumping.

We met up with Dan in Socorro for lunch at The Hat (El Sombrrero), which is a great resteraunt, and then went back to REI in Albuquerque so that Nina and Richard could buy the things they realized they wished they had during the trip.

The trip ended with ice cream at Richard's place in Santa Fe. Nina and I went shopping for rocket stuff (Hobby Lobby is closed on Sundays to allow for the employees families to rest and worship *puke*) and glider stuff. We got the ladies some live crickets for food. It was Carnage Night in the cage. The gliders are definitely natural born killers.