Stallion Gate - Trinity Site

On the Road to Roswell – January 24, 2007

We camped last night in the Lake Lyman State Park in eastern Arizona. The thermometer outside read zero degrees Fahrenheit at 5 AM. We’re up at about 6,000 feet in the desert on a huge uplifted plateau area that covers much of Arizona and New Mexico.

There are no TV signals here so we can’t watch the Australian Open. We play scrabble and Mrs. Phred wins 338-202. Yesterday we saw the old Wigwam Motel on a short segment of Route 66 in Holbrook, Arizona.


The hill in just front of us in the State Park has a number of ancient Indian petroglyphs carved into the rocks. The lake is covered with a sheet of ice.

The air is very clear. The combination of altitude, dry air, low temperature, no moon and lack of air and light pollution bring out the stars as they must have appeared 100 years ago. The nearest small community, Edgar, is 20 miles distant. I saw a couple of shooting stars this morning.

We head for Roswell, New Mexico, 350 miles distant, the site of the famous flying saucer crash in the 1940s. The alien crew member’s bodies are stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The crash was “covered up” as being merely a wayward weather balloon. I learned this fact by talking to other old Air Force air crew who all knew someone who knew someone who had actually seen the bodies.


We pass the Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico. These are the largest array of radio telescopes in the world. We have been to Arecibo in Puerto Rico, but that is just a huge single radio telescope, rather than an very large array.


We pass the Stallion Gate leading to the Trinity test site where the first A-bomb was exploded in 1945. I slam on the brakes and walk 300 yards back to the historical marker. Trinity is only open to the public two days each year. The bomb turned the desert sand to melted green glass called tritinite. The Atomic Energy Commission scooped it all up after the war. We see a novelty shop offering tritinite a few miles later. Probably they are just selling old recycled and polished coca-cola bottle glass.

Later we enter the “Valley of Fires” black lava field. it covers thousands of acres. Cactus grow in the cracks and fissures. I remember camping here with my 13 year old son, who is now much older and now has five children of his own.

Next we pass though Lincoln, New Mexico. That’s where Billy the Kid was held in jail and made his escape by stealing a gun and killing one of his jailers on a trip to the outhouse. I want to see the museum again and spend longer reading Billy’s letters to the territorial Governor. Asteroid Lil lives there. I’d stop and say hello and visit the museum again, but we have no cellular broadband signals so there is no way to contact her today and we want to get to Roswell and watch tennis. We fail to spot her wayward buffalo on the way through..

Here are some pictures of the drive to Roswell.

We find an RV park in Roswell about 16:30 with cable and watch Gonzalez beat Nadal like a gong….like a red-headed step-child...he was beaten comprehensively and in detail...perhaps Gonzalez has a slim chance against Federer if he walks over Haas like he trounced Nadal.

“Peacocks can’t fly above 7,000 feet” -HST

Aguirre Springs, New Mexico – December 22, 2006

We went hiking in the rugged Organ Mountains northeast of Las Cruces today. The hike today started at 5,500 feet and rose to 6,800 in a four-mile loop that took us over three hours. The hike included a close overlook of the White Sands Missile test facility at the base of the mountains. The views and vistas were stunning as we climbed through the snow and boulders. From 6,500 feet we could see the White Sands National Monument white sand dunes 40 miles distant.


We stumble upon animal tracks and excrement in the mud and snow and try to guess what left the signs. Sometimes I see only Mrs. Phred’s footprints ahead in the snow and realize we are off the trail again.

We were listening around 1 PM Mountain time for a sonic boom from the returning shuttle, but it was decided at the last minute that the shuttle could land at Canaveral, rather than diverting to the White Sands Space Harbor below.



On the hike, looking down at the government base in the desert, I wondered if we might be seeing a secret base, even the fabled Los Alamos. Big things happened here in New Mexico from 1943 to 1945.

“…And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.” - H. G. Wells, The World Set Free, 1914

Trinity Site, where the world's first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:29:45 AM on July 16, 1945, is open to the public only twice a year--on the first Saturday in April and October. Trinity is located on the northern end of the 3,200-square-mile White Sands Missile Range below us, between the towns of Carrizozo and Socorro. Visitors need to make a 170-mile drive with no services available. We can see the Southern end of the missile range from our perch.


A one-hour visit to Trinity’s inner fenced area will result in a whole body exposure of one-half to one milliroentgen. In comparison, flying coast to coast in an airliner gives an exposure of between three and five milliroentgens on each trip. Smoking a pack a day adds 40 milliroentgens of exposure in a year.

The heat of the blast melted the desert sand and turned it into a green glassy substance. The green glass is called Trinitite and can still be seen in the area. At one time Trinitite completely covered the depression made by the explosion. Afterward, the depression was filled and much of the Trinitite was taken away by the Nuclear Energy Commission. The remaining Trinitite is still radioactive and should not be picked up as a souvenir.

Los Alamos, New Mexico itself is in a remote location 200 miles north of the White Sands missile test area, about 40 miles west of Santa Fe. It’s near the Bandolier National Monument which contains archeological remnants of Indians that once inhabited the area.

Here’s a link to an album with way too many pictures of the Organ Mountains, cactus in the snow and wild Texas horses.