Tuesday, February 5, 2008 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
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White Sands from the Second Bench, Dog Canyon Trail, Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo, New Mexico, February 2, 2008
Walking from the Chihuahuan Desert into a grassland island
As I remember it, the second bench on the trail is in the second of the three distinct climates one walks through while ascending the trail from the trailhead at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park. First is the Chihuahuan Desert, then a grassland in the area of the second bench, and finally a woodland as one climbs farther up and out onto the mountain plateau above the canyon.
It's hard for me to judge distances out here but I'm going to guess this bench to be maybe 20 - 50 acres with Dog Canyon dropping off to the north and west and a steep mountain ridge rising to the south and east. The bench has a comforting, protected, feeling about it with your back to the wall as you gaze out over the Tularosa Basin and the White Sands dunes. What a great spot for an isolated mountain retreat.
Night camp
Site 8 - Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, Alamogordo NM
- Verizon cell phone service - good signal
- Verizon EVDO service - very good signal and access speed ( I have to qualify this - during my January 2008 visit the signal and access speed was excellent - in January 2009 it was practically non-existent during the day and slow at night with unpredictable short periods of excellent access)
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park website
- Go to Oliver Lee Memorial State Park on my Nightcamps map
- Check the weather here
The Heliograph in the Apache Wars
"The mountains and the sun...were made his allies, the eyes of his command, and the carriers of swift messages. By a system of heliograph signals, communications were sent with almost incredible swiftness; in one instance a message traveled seven hundred miles in four hours. The messages, flashed by mirrors from peak to peak of the mountains, disheartened the Indians as they crept stealthily or rode swiftly through the valleys, assuring them that all their arts and craft had not availed to conceal their trails, that troops were pursuing them and others awaiting them. The telescopes of the Signal Corps, who garrisoned the rudely built but impregnable works on the mountains, permitted no movement by day, no cloud of dust even in the valleys below to escape attention. Little wonder that the Indians thought that the powers of the unseen world were confederated against them."