What is Alamogordo Famous For ?

Day 22  Easter Sunday 24^th April 2011

I asked the girl at the check in desk at the hotel if Alamogordo was famous for anything in particular and she said “sand, white sand, I guess” – so there you are; You are just as wise as we now are about the city of Alamogordo. We did also find out that there are lots of Germans seconded here to train at nearby American Air Force base which is also home to the famed Stealth fighters.

Alamogordo was also very windy when we arrived but this had been the theme for the day since we said goodbye to Fort Stockton in Texas. The ride started out once again on a long boring straight road, thankfully not so hot as the previous day though, but we had chosen to connect to US 82 at the quite interesting town of Artesia a route which took us up through the mountains to over 8500 ft  into the Lincoln State Park before descending into Alamogordo.

 

Goodbye Nodding Donkeys of Texas

 
Up in the mountains the scenery was that of pine trees and winding roads but the higher we got the colder it became and once dipped to 18 degrees celcius which compared to around 30 degrees celcius when we came back down.  We must be getting too acclimatised to the warm weather – 18 degrees back home would seem very comfortable – today the same temperature felt very cold.

Video through the mountains

As we crossed the state line from Texas into New Mexico we also crossed into a new time zone – Mountain Time – which leaves us now 7 hours behind UK time. Tomorrow it gets very complicated. We are making our way to Safford which is in Arizona. Now Arizona is in the Mountain Standard Time Zone but it does not adjust its clocks for Daylight Saving (DST) so it is effectively in the same time zone as Pacific Time Zone – so in other words as we cross the Arizona State line tomorrow we will be a whole 8 hours behind the UK.

 

Mark at the State Line

 
We have also been busy trying to sort out shipping out of the States to Russia. We have decided to bite the bullet and pay around $5000 US dollars for a container to take the bikes to Vladivostock. We have spare room and we may be able to sell some space to reduce our cost but that will be a bonus. We have also been in touch with a Russian shipping agent, Yuri, who has agreed to assist our customs and port clearance of the bikes once in Russia – but, once again, this comes at quite a hefty price tag of around $1,000 US dollars. The bikes have to be on the port side in Seattle by 23^rd May and we have to have them serviced before then so we have about three and a half weeks riding lkeft in the States before we start the journey across the Pacific and the crossing of the International Date Line.

That’s where the real fun starts !