Top of the mountain looking all the way up to the sun

A high school classmate that lives in the mountains of Central New Mexico has been very helpful with ideas of places to visit in this area. One of Cindy's suggestions was to visit the Sunspot Solar Observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico.

A trip to the observatory required a 17-mile drive that gained 524 more feet in elevation past Cloudcroft. We were driving so high that we found drifts of snow on the side of the road.

We stopped off at view-points beside the winding road. From this elevation we could see the entire valley below, with the White Sands National Park shining white across the horizon.

Normally we have visited large telescopes in the evening, because they are pointing to the stars and planets in the night-time sky. But the Dunn Solar Telescope is unique in that it is used during the day. This telescope was designed to watch the sun.

The building housing the telescope is quite large, as Denisa looks very small at the base of it in the picture above. But two-thirds of the scope is actually underground. We were standing at ground level at the observation deck that is shaded in light gray in the drawing below. But most of the workings of the telescope are below the ground.

On most days, the building is closed to visitors. But our friend, Cindy, alerted us that they were having a special open house this weekend. After an educational presentation that described how the telescope worked, we were escorted right into the building. We even got to go inside the telescope observation room that is seldom open to the public.

In the presentation we learned that while the outside of the building stays in one place, the inside rotates to follow the sun. Denisa is standing on the stationary part of the observation deck, while the inside portion is moving ever so slowly.

The designer of the telescope understood the need for it to follow the sun as it moved across the sky. So the entire center is pivoting on a mercury bearing that is supporting all the weight of that heavy telescope and the computerized equipment that goes with it.

While a night-time telescope would be focusing on stars and planets, we are actually looking at the surface of the sun. The day-time astronomer in charge made a special Sunday trip up for this presentation. He found a solar flare that the big telescope can see, and he focused this smaller scope on it so that we could see it as well.

It's tough to take a cell phone picture through a scope lens, but here is our best attempt. The white in the lower left corner is the sun. The light pink cotton-candy-like fluff is a solar flare going high into the atmosphere above the sun.

More sophisticated cameras took the picture below that was displayed on the wall at the visitor entrance. Fiery hot bursts on the fiery hot surface of the sun make beautiful solar flare displays.

After our walk around the grounds of the Sunspot Solar Observatory, we stopped back by the gift shop in the visitors center. It's fun that many of the items for sale have something to do with the power of solar. For example, this t-shirt looks like a plain black and white print . . .

until it gets into the sunlight and turns into a full color print. That should make a good souvenir to take back to our grandson. We also picked a flowered t-shirt that blooms into colors in the sunlight, plus color-changing rings and nail polish for our granddaughter. What a fun gift shop!

While we were on the top of the mountain at 9,200 feet in elevation, we decided to do some more exploring. We followed a brown sign that pointed us towards Bluff Springs Waterfall in the Lincoln National Forest. The paved road soon turned into a narrow dirt road that finally ended at a parking lot close to the falls. We're high enough that even in April there was ice and snow on the falls.

The only angle to see the falls puts the sun right in front of the camera. After our morning learning about telescoping the sun, we see that those rays are making psychedelic patterns on our pictures this afternoon.

We hiked high into mountains of the Lincoln National Forest, and we had to notice how healthy the trees look in this part of New Mexico. The beetles and fires haven't decimated the forest here south of Cloudcroft.

Our hike on the Willie White Trail Spur took us up and then back down the mountain. The parts of the trail in the shade put us on a icy path that we had to skate down.

It was a long slippery trek back to the pickup in the parking lot below. In spots where the ice was melting, we had to slog through the mud. It's not quite the ideal time for hiking high in the mountains.

Another stop was the viewpoint overlooking one of the trestles of the Alamogordo and Sacramento Mountain Railroad. Built in 1899, the train crossed 122 wooden bridges, 58 timber trestles, and went around 330 curves. They had an unusually large number of train wrecks on this unusually steep grade. The train was used to carry passengers up from the hot country in the valley near Alamogordo, and timber down from the refreshing cool of the mountains.

The elk are enjoying the refreshing cool of the mountains as well. We saw herds of elk consistently on our drives around Cloudcroft, and our campground host warned us not to be on the roads at dawn or dusk.

This is a great area to visit, and we had a great time wandering His wonders to the top of the mountains, looking all the way up to the sun today!