Originally Posted by Birdwatcher
Originally Posted by 3dtestify
That place looks real NICE!!!

Dunno if you’re being sarcastic or not, this is the ‘Fire after all. About 560 miles from my front door, leave my street in the early morning, be at 9,000ft overlooking White Sands in the afternoon. The Great Bear restaurant on the left next to the Coors sign serves a fine breakfast.

Fifteen miles from there, Mescalero Rez, Silver Lake Campground, clean, quiet, well maintained, and unlimited really hot water in the showers for just the reasonable day use fee. Just the thing if ya ain’t showered since yesterday morning 😎

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Great country. I grew up hunting and camping in the Sacrementos. Before Hatch was a national brand, people would show up this time of year in the grocery store parking lot and roast and sell chiles. I can still remember the smell, which was wonderful.

You mention White Sands. Fort Bliss, Holloman and White Sands, which are more or less connected may be the biggest military installation in the world. I want to say combined it's something like 5,000 square miles and from the Mexican border to around Socorro if I remember, correctly. I've hunted the missile range, and it's beautiful desert country with ranch houses and pens from the early 1900s that look like time capsules.

During Spring turkey season, I sat on the mountain one evening outside of Cloudcroft looking west toward White Sands and watched an aircraft doing what I estimate to be around mach 20. And that wasn't even the amazing part, that thing would go from that speed to a complete stop in mid-air, go straight up and do all sorts of amazing aerobatics. We watched it for an hour or so and then got nervous and got in the tent and went to bed.

A couple of years ago, I brought that story up with a friend of mine who was a young officer at Holloman at the same time I saw the aircraft. He got really nervous, stared at the floor and wouldn't look me in the eye and then started talking about the Dallas Cowboys, which is odd because I've never before or since heard him talk sports.

I saw some crazy stuff a few times out hunting and camping in that part of New Mexico.