I’m in Albuquerque, NM visiting with my sister. One thing she wanted to do while I was here was to do a roadtrip out to some touristy places so that I can see what NM is like and the new state she lives in and all that. She had recently (a couple years ago) moved out here with her job and is starting to get a feel for what is what in New Mexico, so she wanted to take me to some neat spots. Sounds good to me, let’s go!
Roswell – site of the 1947 UFO crash
I’ve always been fascinated by UFOs and the alien phenomenon and stuff like that, so I thought that hitting Roswell on our trip would be fun. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, although I knew I wouldn’t be going to any actual crash site and I wouldn’t be viewing any actual UFO. I don’t know what had more impact on me: the quaintness of all the alien-themed businesses and signs and whatnot, or the bummer that was the UFO Museum and Research Center. I know, I know…it’s a tourist trap and one with a decidedly left-field subject matter, but what a hunk of crap! You walk in and it’s just a big room with all the “official” military and government files blown up to poster size on the wall. Then there are some small 3D models of the site itself, but honestly they’re not as good as what your average train hobbyist can do to his firstborn’s former bedroom. Be that as it may, we hit the gift shop and got some postcards. I picked up some golfballs for Dudeman and some guitar picks for Delta Foxtrot and we were on to the next stop.
I wanted coffee, so we went to the Not of This World coffee shop. The only thing alien-themed about this place was the name. It had a Tuscan theme on the inside which wasn’t half bad, but even the bathroom had no evidence of an alien presence. Whatever, get the coffee and move on to…
Roswell Space Center! This was another cheesy tourist shop. Oh well, we looked around and picked up a couple more postcards and some stickers for my former Webmaster and left there in about 5.6 minutes flat.
On the way out of town we hit an airfield. It’s an airfield that is home to what appears to be retired airplanes from all walks of life. Right up front and center was a FedEx plane with its jet intakes covered up. But what I was wondering was, “Why here? Why Roswell?” I know that there’s a big boneyard out in the desert in California somewhere, but why here. And all these planes looked like they were capable of flight. They weren’t parted out or cannibalized, they were just mothballed and winterized. Hmmmm…strange. Also, we couldn’t just go out onto the tarmac and check them out, I had to take pics from outside the fence. That made me wonder if we were going to have some friends come up to us and ask for ID, because we were in the middle of what appeared to be some kind of base. I saw a B-1B Lancer taking off from somewhere behind the fence and there was a building that was called The International Law Enforcement Academy, however, it appeared about as international as Juneau International Airport, so whatever… But there I was, outside a fenced-off area, with my camera, just shooting away. Oh yeah, and did I mention that I was wearing my camo pants? I felt a little weird out there.
After hitting the road, it sort of dawned on me that everything about Roswell was pretty much stuck in the 50s. There aren’t really any modern buildings there and everything had that old grey engineer’s drafting table quality to it. Oh well, been there, done that now. I may want to go back some time, but I can say I’ve been to Roswell now.
Carlsbad Caverns – a big hole in the ground
Nancy had told me about her trip to Carlsbad Caverns one time. She mentioned how they were there when all the bats flew out of the cave and how the sheer numbers were just amazing. Well, we weren’t going there for that, since it is the wrong time of year, but we can still take a tour of the caves and see that. So we did. I’m not an especially claustrophobic person, but when you close your eyes and visualize that you are 800 ft under the surface and then you think to yourself, as I’m sure everybody does, “What if this place caves in?”
Screw that.
Unfortunately, the tour itself was being given by one of those guides who thought themselves quite witty. Maybe I’m not old enough to fit the demographic she was going for, but her jokes were horrible and her overall demeanor was SO NICE, I wanted to break stuff. I’ve worked in tourism, and I’ve actually had to guide a few times, so I know what parameters she had to deal with. However, like any time you have to speak in front of a crowd or if you have to sell something, I feel like if I’m interacting with a character and not the real person playing the character, then I feel shortchanged. Or maybe I feel like the person is shortchanging themselves. Either way, the experience winds up lacking something vital. The cavern itself was pretty cool though, with the stalactites and stalagmites and draperies and popcorn and a bunch of other terms for the various formations we were being shown. And that’s pretty much that. Well, the caves themselves anyway. I did have a Mickey Rooney lookalike in front of me who kept farting every time we moved from one room to another. Nancy had said that if I wanted to take pictures, then we should be the last in the group so that we weren’t holding people up as I took pics when we all walked from one area to the next, so we did exactly that. Much to my enjoyment, Mickey Rooney was a bit of a shutterbug himself and a gaseous one at that, so I had the pleasure of walking through the clouds he was laying down in front of me. DIRECTLY in front of me. I should have gotten his ass kicked out for leaving a chemical trail that would accelerate erosion of the pristine environment we were in, but I’d already had enough of humans at that point, so I just shut the hell up.
After that, we jumped in the truck and drove for a long time to…
White Sands National Monument!
I had NO idea what this was going to be all about. I knew there was a missile range with the same name, but the term National Monument is sort of ambiguous. Is it an actual man-made monument, like you find in Washington DC, or is it a plot of land that they just decided to call a Monument? I don’t know. Or at least I didn’t until Friday.
White Sands is a beautiful place. I’d almost come back strictly and simply for a photo safari, because it is an alien environment once you get inside the area itself. White Sands National Monument is a place where gypsum has been deposited and has made the sand in the area white. The white sandy dunes cover an area that is 275 sq miles and you can drive out into it on days when the military isn’t testing missiles, as the White Sands Missile Range surrounds the area. Anyway, you get out into the dunes themselves and the brain starts to play tricks on you. Okay, yeah, it’s warm out and I’m only in a t-shirt, but it LOOKS like snow all around and even the way the road has been plowed looks like the street I grew up on in the winter time. I kept viewing stuff as though everything was going to melt.
We hit the place right before sunset, so I was able to get some daylight shots and some sunset shots. Either way, if you ever get the chance to show up there, give it a shot. White Sands is strange and beautiful.
After that, we hit the road again and got back to Nancy’s place around 11pm. It was a long 48hrs, and of course, in Roadtrip Time, it felt like a week had gone by. Good fun though. The end result of all of it is: Go to Roswell. Sure why not? Carlsbad is your call…I don’t need to go back. White Sands? GO! It’s beautiful.
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