Dan and Britt are on vacation in New Mexico. They flew into Albuquerque on Saturday night and on Sunday morning rented a car and headed south from there. Their first destination was White Sands National Monument, in south New Mexico. I’ve been there before. It is a magical spot. On our flight to California last month, we overflew it. It is an island of white in a sea of endless brown. It is located at the southern end of White Sands Missile Range, a closed military area.

Driving from Albuquerque to the monument means driving around the missile range. Along this range’s northern edge is a sign that commemorates the Manhattan Project’s Trinity Site, where during WW II the first atomic bomb was detonated. Without a base pass you cannot see anything, not that there is a lot to see anyway. One patch of desert looks pretty much like the next.

In Alamogordo, just north of the monument is McGinn’s Pistachio Land, home of the world’s largest pistachio. A normal pistachio requires a gallon of water to be grown. This one might have drained the lake. I am not saying radioactivity caused this particular pistachio to grow to be this large, but I am also not saying that it didn’t. Weird things happen in the desert.