OK, the Balloon Fiesta is over and we are on our way to Roswell NM to find aliens and UFOs. We left Albuquerque around 11 am with dust and all. Our RV and truck are covered in dirt and dust. Also, the interior has these really sharp burrs embedded in the carpet. Don’t know how the burrs happened because we always try to take our shoes off outside of the RV. However, that became hard to do as the burrs were even on the steps into the RV. We really need a day to clean up the entire rig.
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| The Roswell City limit sign. It is even lit up at night with LEDS! |
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| Light pole in downtown Roswell. |
We arrived at Midway RV Park 7 miles south of Roswell around 3 in the afternoon. The place is a no frills campground and the price of $15 a night made it a great campground. The sites are very long paved pull-throughs with enough space to park the RV and the truck in line and still have room. It is also right off of US 20, very easy to access. The only downside we found is the smell if the wind is blowing from the north. There are 2 huge cattle ranches across the street. Also, with the smell come large numbers of flies. Even with that, we like the place.
We got set up and I went into town to get our General Delivery Mail at the Post Office. Patty stayed back to start to clean the inside of the rig. Man, the rig looked and smelled so much better went I got back from town. The AC was on too so the interior smelled just like normal again. Patty did a great job.
Tuesday the 8th we are going into town to make sense of this UFO/Aliens stuff everyone hears about from here. The town of Roswell is much bigger than I had originally thought. The city has a population of just under 50K. It is a very nice and welcoming town with a big visitor’s center, restaurants, and even a wine bar downtown, more on that later.
We started our Roswell adventure at the visitor’s center. There we found lots of town memorabilia with an emphasis on the 1947 UFO crash outside of Roswell. Patty had learned that the only UFO tour was done by a guy named Dennis who was now 71 years old. However, Dennis, just in the past couple of weeks, is no longer giving the tours, according to the owner of the tour company. He was the ONLY tour guide they use, so replacing him will be very difficult. This was news to the visitor’s center employee we met. She had been wondering why Dennis had not been around lately and now was going to give him a call to see how he is doing. It is good to be part of the local news!
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| Visitor's Center entrance. Looks like they promote the UFO culture here! |
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| Roswell has a UFO Festival every July. This is this year's poster. |
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| Another poster at the visitor's Center. |
From the visitor’s center we headed to the center of town where there are 2 UFO attractions, the Alien Zone and the UFO Museum. The Alien Zone is a fun commercial tourist type place. Again we are saying fun because it really is fun. They only charge $3 each to go into their make believe Area 51 where you can take pictures with aliens in different scenes. They also make their own T-shirts that were very unique and cheap, most just $7-$8 each! We both had to get one.
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| Looks like the Aliens are all female. |
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| Having a Coke and just figuring out what really happened from one of the locals. |
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| Patty is trying to find the Roswell dirt off another local. |
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| You most likely to get the real story from the bartender. |
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| We even tried to get info by transferring brain waves from a local to Patty. |
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| This was just not supposed to HAPPEN!! |
The UFO museum is just what it says it is. This the place where you have visitors coming in with aluminum foil hats on, no joke here, really! Everything you ever heard or wanted to know about visits form aliens, UFOs, the Bermuda triangle, and alien abductions can be found here. They even have a real research library that is staffed! We are still not sure what to make of UFOs, but we learned a lot from visiting the museum. If passing through Roswell I would recommend a visit to the UFO museum. Again, cheap at just $5 each.
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| Mac Brazel owned the ranch where the crash site is. It is completely cordoned off now and a 40 mile 4x4 drive. |
After the museum we headed to a local wine bar, also in downtown Roswell. This is where we found out what the locals think about the UFO crash in 1947. First, for those that don’t know about the original crash I’ll try to give a summarization. July 1947 a UFO crashed about 70 miles North West of Roswell NM after dark. The crash and the debris were witnessed by several people. For some reason the military showed up and removed all of the evidence and told the witnesses including involved military personnel not to reveal what happened. As the witnesses were getting older and near the end of their lives in the late 80s and 90’s they started to tell what they saw happen. One of the things they saw were several dead and at least one living alien at the site and later at the military hospital. The military at the time said that the crash was a weather balloon and there were altitude experiments with crash dummies being performed, CASE CLOSED. Now we have a government conspiracy or theory of one anyway.
I will say that after visiting the museum that it is very hard to not believe that a spacecraft from somewhere other than Earth crashed here. Also, it seems that it really had alien beings on board. This is just my opinion.
At the wine bar, after sampling several local wines we purchased a bottle to sit and drink. While at the bar we had 2 local guys come in at different times and have a drink next to us. Both of these guys were born, raised, and work here in Roswell. So Patty asks these guys separately what they think happened back in 1947. We got 2 different stories from what I had ever heard before. The first and most provocative is that the military was performing some sort of experiments on POWs and special needs people after WWII and one of the experiments crashed here. The guy went on to say that the government led everyone to believe it was a UFO with aliens. But, in fact it was a military craft with either Japanese POWs or what we call today, special needs kids. WOW! The guy said that there are a lot of people here that believe this story. It certainly would answer why the government would want to conceal this!
OK, the next guy with a story said that the government was paying people off, $10k a year to not tell the real story. Supposedly people are still being paid off. He got this story from a descendant of the original owner of the ranch where the crash happened. This descendant owns the ranch today. Another WOW!
Neither of these stories is found at the museum. Are these just more conspiracy theories? Who knows!
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| At the wine bar having discussions with the "real" locals. |
By the way, to get to the crash site requires permission from private owners, a 4 wheel drive vehicle, and 4 hours time. We decided that we were not going to do that.
That was the end of the Roswell NM adventure. Seems it does pay to sit in a bar and listen!
Wednesday the 9th was major cleaning day. I washed the truck and the RV. I even washed the roof of the RV. Then I went into town and topped off the fuel tank and filled a propane bottle. These jobs took all day or 7 hours of it. I was ready to sit and relax after that.
While I did the rig cleaning, Patty did laundry. Laundry is FREE here. However, there are only one washer and dryer, so it took most of the day to wash our stuff. Patty also helped with drying the truck. If any one of you have been in the desert southwest you will know how hard it is to wash anything here. The humidity is around 15-20% which means that anything wet dries all most as soon as you get it wet. Also, after a full day in 85 degree temperatures and working your ass off, your clothes are not wet from sweat. However, you are covered in a thick layer of crusty salt.
We ended the day with a great dinner of meatloaf that Patty cooked. Time for bed!
Tomorrow we head further south and east to Post Texas. Nothing special about Post Texas, just a stopover on our way to Dallas for the State Fair. We are also meeting some new friends that live there, Garry and Laurie. Garry did a great job getting us a site close to Dallas during the State Fair. Most places around Dallas are booked solid for next week
Mac Brazel owned the ranch where the crash site is. It is completely cordoned off now and a 40 mile 4x4 drive.
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