5 Best Sights in Southwestern New Mexico, New Mexico

Caballo Lake State Park provides winter nesting grounds for golden and bald eagles, often sighted gliding aloft as they search for prey. Fishing and water sports are popular at the lake, and hiking trails lead through the desert areas where yucca, century plants, and numerous varieties of cacti are abundant. A great time to visit is late March or early April, when prickly pears and other succulents are in bloom.

NM 52 leads about 40 mi west from I–25, near Truth or Consequences, to Winston and Chloride, two fascinating mining towns just east of the Gila National Forest. Prospectors searching for silver in the nearby ore-rich mountains founded the towns in the late 1800s; abandoned saloons and false-front buildings, and pioneer relics still remain. Though the communities are designated ghost towns, the moniker is belied by the 50 or so residents currently living in each place, and Chloride has several businesses in operation.

At the distinctively homespun Geronimo Springs Museum, you can visit a room dedicated to Ralph Edwards' career and his very personal connection to the town that renamed itself after his quiz show, and you can view the giant skull of a woolly mammoth that was excavated in the nearby Gila National Forest. There's also a pictorial history of the dental chair, an essential display on cowboy hats and the personalities that wear them, and a pretty darn good collection of early Mimbres, Tularosa, Alma, and Hohokam pottery. Also check out the excellent bookshop with regional titles. The county visitor center is next door.

Hay-Yo-Kay Hot Springs has seven naturally flowing pools, including one that, at 10 feet by 20 feet, is the largest and longest established in the hot-springs district. The standard price for the hot baths is $6 per person for a half-hour soak indoors, $11 for a half hour in an outdoor pool. Add $1.50 for a towel, and another 50¢ for a bottle of water. Massage, Reiki, and reflexology therapists are on call for varying fees. Packages are available—for instance, a soak and a 50-minute massage cost $65.

It may be hard to imagine as you gaze into the infinite blue of New Mexico's southern sky, but someday soon those wispy contrails you see lingering from rocket engines may be the residue of vehicles carrying tourists into Earth's orbit—and beyond.

In October 2005 the White Sands Missile Range hosted the first of a series of X Prize Cup competitions, aimed at enabling private industry to become involved in (relatively) economical space travel. Some of the launch technologies that resulted have been pivotal to the development, barely five years later, of the facility that will house Virgin Galactic and make space tourism a reality (though cash flow is more likely to come from suborbital satellite launches and payload cargo). Visitor centers in both Hatch and Truth or Consequences are planned to launch as soon as Spaceport flights are operational; bus tours that will originate from those centers are part of the program. But to get on board SpaceShipTwo, it will cost you around $200,000.