Socorro, N.M - May 16

May 16, 2014

Today we are in Socorro, N.M. - another stop on our adventure.   We found this little town and decided to stop.  It was more interesting than we imagined.  We always try to stop around 200 miles a day and see where we land.  We were supposed to go to Albuquerque but we have been there before so took a smaller scenic road and ended up here.

On the way here we passed what looked similar to the lava rock we saw at “Crater of the Moon” national park last year.  We found a pull off on the road and checked it out.  It was called:  “Valley of Fire”.  It is taken care of by the Bureau of Land Management.  It is a Lave flow that is approximately 2 miles wide and over 20 miles long.  We enjoyed the break from the drive.

This is called Lava Rope 

It is formed with ridges caused by the lava flowing over it.

Ton hiked down into the lava and took this picture

looking up to the R.V.

I liked these little flowers growing wild in the lava

They had just this one lonely picnic table on the pull off

Ton looks like he's studying something.

Once we found a campground we went exploring. 

We started out by going to the Mineral Museum.  It is located in the Institute of Mining and Technology.

These nice pieces are from New Mexico.

This is a Mineral specimen from the first

Atomic Bomb Explosion in 1951

You can click on any picture to make it larger

We then drove through the cute little town of Socorro.

The steel piece that I'm standing by is a small piece

of the first Nuclear Device.

It is described on the Jumbo sign below

From there we went to San Miguel Mission.  Founded in 1598, it was abandoned during the Pueblo Revolt but was rebuilt in 1615.  It has 850

Registered parishioners and is the mother church for the area mission churches in Socorro County.  In 2010 the main church closed due to structural problems for restoration.  It will reopen in September, 2014 in time for the historic quadricentennial (400 year old) celebration.  The celebration will last for 1 year.   It was nice to see it even though we couldn’t go inside.

It was a nice afternoon so We have decided to stay tomorrow night too, as there are a few more things we’d like to see.