Day 366 (Goodbye Gerry!)

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog, and what a great coincidence it is that I finally did today something that I had been planning on doing for YEARS!!!!! If you follow this blog, then you might know that there's this movie I absolutely despise called Gerry. It stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as two friends who get lost in a desert. That is the entire plot of the film. It's long and it's boring and it SUCKS!!! So, my friend Carly and I used to always joke that the only fitting end for this movie was to be left in the middle of a salt flat somewhere, much like the characters in the movie. That was one of my primary objectives on this trip, and by golly if I didn't do it today!

Here's Hammie at the salt flat.

Here's the salt flat.

I didn't get all GPS scientific about this, but to find the spot where I put the DVD, go to Salt Flat, TX, and as you could have probably guessed, walk out onto the salt flat. When you are at the point where you can stand with your hands sticking straight out to the sides and have each hand pointing at these: (One hand should be pointing to the tip of that mountain in the middle of the first picture. Your other hand should be pointing to the tip of that mountain that you can barely make out in the distance in the middle of the second picture.)

And then, you can turn 90 degrees, stick your arms to the sides and have your hands pointing at these: (One hand should be pointing at this rise toward the end of the salt flat in the first picture. The other hand should be pointing to the tip of this mountain in the middle of the second picture.)

Then you are at the right spot. Look how far Hammie is! (The small dark spot in the middle of the picture.)

Goodbye Gerry!

After that, we went to Roswell, NM, home of the infamous Area 51 alien crash landing conspiracy! We started our alien adventure at the UFO museum and research library. (Note the street lamp in front of the museum sign. All of the street lamps on this block have alien faces on them.)

It was funny to see all of these posters that I had once owned as part of the museum's exhibits.

And, continued the fun at the Area 51 kid zone a few store fronts away.

Roswell was fun, and while there were alien references everywhere, the local bank had an alien spaceship as part of it's logo and there was a giant green alien statue in front of the KFC, I just expected there to be more alien craziness.

To finish up our day, I set the GPS to Tucson, AZ. I didn't expect us to actually get that far; I just figured we'd stop somewhere once we got tired and pick up where we left off tomorrow. The route took us right past White Sands National Monument, and while it wasn't on the schedule, I was not going to pass up the opportunity!

Unlike most other sandy places, the sand in White Sands is made of gypsum crystals, which gives it its striking white color. We ended up going on a ranger led sunset walk where my mom and I ended up taking off our shoes so we could walk around barefoot in the powdery gypsum sand. It was so much fun doing a nature walk barefoot; I felt like a kid again.

My mom doing some yoga poses in front of the sunset.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: