Hippies from New Mexico

We left Alamogordo, NM pretty late and it got dark just a couple hours after we bought pistachio wine, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Too bad, cause the road ("54" and then "280") was very scenic. Already after dark we passed the Trinity Site, where the first nuclear test took place. Oh well, it was pretty far and it's closed to regular people anyway... Only twice a year there is convoy organized from Alamogordo. Even if we were there on one of those days we would really have to think about it, as it's still a bit radioactive. So probably not the best idea to go there, especially with kids. And the desert looks the same everywhere, doesn't it? 

We stopped on the way to see lava, but, who would expect, it's really hard to see it when it's dark.What we saw instead was a guy with a sheet and lamps. We asked him what he was doing. He said he's catching moths for one of the museums (we don't remember which one). He said he liked his job.

Moth catcher

We decided to spend that night at free BLM campsite. BLM, or Bureau of Land Management is in charge of all the public land that is not national, state or municipal park or other wilderness, refuge, national monument etc. areas (there are lots of different kinds of those here). Usually it's woods. And in these woods sometimes there are campsites and very often they are quite nice, sometimes they have some picnic areas, toilets, fire places, trash cans. You can find them through freecampsites.net. BLM website is not very user friendly.

We couldn't find The Box campsite near Socorro. It was dark, there weren't any signs, but after a few u-turns we turned on our GPS and we found it. It's like this with these BLM campsites, there are no signs and lights by the highway, usually there is a back, dirt road you have to take for a mile or two before you find the picnic tables, toilets and trash containers. That is what The Box looked like (no tables though, just a restroom and trash container).

When we got there it was totally dark. All we could see was the sky with stars. We haven't seen so many stars in a long time. When we set up our trailer at the end of the campsite we saw a tent and a fire. Soon we met its owner. 

Tiny point at the parking is our Eddie

We put kids down to sleep and we met Tom, geezer hippie, whose all property was in his tent and his friends were taking him by car from one place to another. We stayed by the fire until late night listening to his stories about living in a commune and happy life of a free bird. Ooooh - that's how he would start his stories. "Few days ago there was 24-year-old Kyla from Wisconsin here. She is traveling to find herself. Kyla - I said, if you're 24 and you're traveling, it means you already found yourself! Oooh, if I was 25 years younger I would charm her out of her pants in five seconds".

Kyla told Tom he reminded her of her favourite creepy uncle. We had different impression. If you read "On The Road" by Jack Kerouc and remember all those more or less strange people from his trips, Tom was a personification of them all. "Two things didn't work in communes in the seventies. First was open marriages.   Too many emotions. Second, who is doing the dishes. It was always me cause they'd just annoy me".

There was also something about raising the kids. "So we're sitting one time, totally high, and our son took a piece of string from somewhere, hooked it to something higher on one side, lower on another, and he put some toy on it. We looked at the toy moving from one side to the other and we just couldn't believe it...". And so on, all night long. Tom also hastily wanted to start a discussion about Polish history, Warsaw Uprising and Ghetto Uprising but Pawel just cut it saying that starting history discussions is a Polish thing after finishing the first bottle. 

There were also some Indian stories who understood well the spirit of communes in New Mexico so they were very friendly and about not so friendly rangers. But on the other hand children of communes after living in a wild often would become rangers themselves. Fire kept burning, whiskey kept flowing… and if Tom is reading this, please know that this was one of the most amazing evenings of our trip. Not creepy at all:)

Around midnight another car arrived at the campground. Two climbers came to spend a night in one of the caves few hundred feet above us. They sat by the fire with us for a while and then went climbing. We could see two lonely lights moving up the dark wall.

In 2/3 of the wall more to the right there is a cave our new friends spent night at

In the morning we were amazed by what we saw. We found out we slept in a gorge between two huge rocks very popular among local climbers. By noon there were already five cars of them. People pay lots of money to camp in such a beautiful place, and here it is, for free. We even considered staying another night, just to see those amazing stars again, but at last we've decided to move on.

The Box

Before we left we met Tom's friend, Mike. Actually Ola and Maciek met him, cause Pawel was still not feeling well after long night of socializing. Mike is from our former trade. He was in Poland few years ago, worked with a geophysical company we know. He liked Poland and spent some time travelling with his backpack.

Tom with Maciek and Mike

Mike left Tom some food and probably some other supplies and went back to his life. And we got in the car, and headed, as usual, west.