New Mexico Road Trip - Socorro

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Today we are in Socorro and have three scenic byways to travel, but they are all grouped together so it won’t be difficult to do them all.  The hotel offered a complimentary breakfast buffet so we got up early enough for that and were on the road by 9:30.  We drove west out of Socorro on US60 as the scenic byways are all on or off of that highway. 

Our route for the day.

We drove this highway back in 2017 on the way home from our Geezer Gathering in Ruisdoso.  As we drove through this desolate country, we came across some extremely large satellite dishes mounted on railroad tracks.  We stopped and took pictures but had no idea what they were for.  When we got home and Googled it, we found they were part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NARO) Very Large Array Radio Telescope Facility (VLA) and that’s where we are headed today.  We didn’t know there was a visitor’s center the last time we drove this route, but we know now and visited it today.

The drive west out of Socorro goes through some very desolate country.  We passed through the small town of Magdalena that marked the beginning of Scenic Byway #19.  The byway goes all the way to Apache Creek, but we would only be going as far as the VLA today as we have driven this before and have a lot to do today.

Driving west from Socorro on US60, very desolate country.

The turnoff to scenic byway 18, that we'll take later in the day.

The small town of Magdalena.

It took us just over an hour to get to the visitor’s center and when we walked in we were met by someone who gave us an orientation as to what we could and couldn’t do.  The first thing he told us was to turn off the wifi and bluetooth on our phones and put them into airplane mode.  These large radio telescopes in the array are so sensitive that even something as weak and small as a cell phone can interfere with the signals they are receiving from space.  The resolution of the array is so high that it would be like a person being able to read an optometrist eye chart in New York while sitting in California.

Our first stop was the gift shop where we paid our admission fee, and I bought a T-shirt and then we browsed through the museum and learned more about the facility.  These large radio telescopes have been used in quite a few films including “Contact”, “Independence Day” and “Armageddon”.  We watched a fifteen-minute film about the facility and the history of radio telescopes.  It was very interesting, and we learned a lot.

Here are a few things we learned about the large satellite dishes or antennas as they are called.  There are 28 of them with 27 being active and one used as a spare.  The dishes are 82 feet in diameter and each one weighs 230 tons.  They are moved around on three sets of tracks radiating from the NRAO with one going north that is 11 miles long and two others that are 13 miles long each.  Depending on what they are currently looking for, they are positioned over a very wide area in different configurations.  When you see them, it really does look like a science fiction movie.

After the film we took the self-guided walking tour of the facility and then drove over to a big barn-like structure where they build and repair these giant radio telescopes.  Next to it was a large tractor-like machine that was used to move the telescopes from one position to another in the array.

The large building is where they repair and build these huge radio telescopes.

 

This is the large tractor that is used to move the radio telescopes around.  It may not look like it in the picture, but it's huge.

After that it was time to leave, but in a way, we hated to go.  We were fascinated by what they were doing here; they were seeing something that happened millions of years ago and many million light years away.  We returned to the main highway and drove further west a short distance to take some pictures, but then we turned back east towards our next scenic byway.

 

Our next scenic drive was Scenic Byway #35 that went up into the Magdalena Mountains to Withington Peak at over 10,000 feet.  This was a rather long loop drive that would turn into a rough four-wheel drive road so because of the time we had we didn’t expect to finish the complete route and that proved to be true.  The first part of the road was paved, but then turned into dirt and then into a rough narrow track.  It wasn’t really a difficult drive, but it was very slow going and would take us at least a couple of hours to complete, so we were happy to complete about half of it and turn around and head back.  On the way back we found a nice spot and had our lunch but had to eat in the car as it was quite cold, and a pretty hard wind was blowing.

We start scenic byway 35 towards Withington Mountain.

Time to head back to the main highway ...

... but first a stop for lunch

You can see one of the radio telescopes on the left in the distance.  It is quite a ways east so it must be near the end of the tracks.

From there it was back to highway 60 where we continued east towards Socorro and our last scenic drive of the day.  Scenic Byway #18 would take us back up into the Magdalena Mountains to a spot called South Baldy.  South Baldy was the location of several scientific installations including the Lagmuir Laboratory for Atmospheric Research and the Magdalena Ridge Observatory.

Although this road was only fifteen miles long it was very steep and narrow and required four-wheel drive.  Unlike a lot of the places we visited, the facilities at the top were not open to the public so there wasn’t any real incentive for us to get to the top.  Fifteen miles wasn’t very far, but at ten miles an hour it would take an hour and a half up and back, so after we got halfway up, we decided to turn back as we had some things we wanted to do in Socorro before it got too late in the afternoon.

Here's the sign for the byway turnoff.

Scenic byway 18 started out easy enough, but the road got progressively worse as we got into the mountains.

It may seem a little strange there are so many scientific facilities out here in the middle of nowhere, but it actually makes sense.  This area is one of the most isolated areas in New Mexico.  Catron County, where this is all located, covers 7000 square miles and has a population of only 3500, so you can see this is an area of very clear skies and not much human impact.

We got back to Socorro around 3:30 and had some work to do.  First of all, we are about two and a half weeks into this trip and the 4Runner is pretty dirty inside and out, especially after all the wind, dust and dirt roads of the last two days.  I emptied everything out of the 4Runner and moved things into our hotel room and then headed to a do-it-yourself car wash.  We got the worst of the dust and dirt off the outside and Val did a great job of cleaning the inside and we had a pretty clean vehicle again.

Back at the hotel, we had some laundry to do and the hotel had a nice laundry room so we took care of that.  By this time we were getting hungry, and Val found a place called Yo Mama's Grill that got good review so we headed there for dinner.  It was quite crowded when we arrived so it must be popular and the reviews were correct, we had a very good dinner.

We returned from dinner and that was it for us, it had been a long busy day, so it was time to relax.  I did have to download our pictures for the day and update the blog, but that’s something I like to do so I didn’t mind.

Tomorrow, we move on to Silver City, New Mexico where we’ll spend four days.  Time has really flown by, it’s hard to believe we are past the halfway point and are nearing the end of our scenic drive quest.  Out of the 35 scenic drives in our book, we have done 24, skipped one because of bad weather and safety concerns, and skipped two because they were too far out of our way and we had already done one of them anyway.  That leaves only eight to go so we’ll see how many we end up completing.

Scenic Drives Completed: 24 of 35

Scenic Drives Missed: 3