Alamogordo: First Street

Moon over First Street, Alamogordo, New Mexico.

For someone who is directionally-impaired like me, Alamogordo is laid out in a user-friendly grid that makes sense 85% of the time. The other 15% drives me crazy, with streets ending in one spot and then picking up again in another; with 10th Street curving at one end just to mess with my head because on one end it's super close to where I live, but on the other end it's really far away. And then there's this lane thing on 10th Street where I keep making the mistake of turning right onto College Street when I really need to stay straight. Oh. Wait. We're not talking about 10th Street yet.

So below is a slide show about First Street. I'll add to it from time to time. On First Street are some architectural and landscaping things going on that I want to get into in the future. I'm curious about how the different architectural styles in Alamogordo react with the summer heat, the intensity of the sun. 

One of the photos below is a first shot at the Azotea complex. These apartments are low to the ground, a sage-y green, and have a rectangular shape that is attractive. They look really nice with the Sacramento Mountains as a backdrop. I drove through there the other day to see what they were about. On one hand, I saw naturalized landscaping, in various stages of development, that I could see will be quite beautiful in the future. On the other hand, there was precious little outside space for the residents, and I was taken aback by the gigantic plate windows of the south-facing units, with no shade overhangs to deflect what must be a brutal solar attack on the apartments in the summer. This design choice is inexplicable to me. But maybe I'm missing something, so I'll go back to check it out some more.  Update: I did return and here is my report.  

Note also the sign (in front of Las Ventanas Apartments) reassuring passersby that the irrigation is from a well. Water here is another topic I want to get into in the future, but my current understanding is that the number of wells in the area is limited and not everyone has water rights on their property. Well water taps into an aquifer that is a finite resource. But I'm kind of fuzzy on all this right now.

Near Las Ventanas Apartments is the very attractive Desert Palms mobile home park which is xeriscaped beautifully. More on this, too, in the future.