Tuesday 31st January – Roswell

We were only a ten-minute drive from Roswell town which was larger than we were expecting.  As is customary we drove to the VC and got our free parking for the day, though I don’t think on street parking was an issue in any case. It is very much low season here and times must be hard for the Alien-outlet owner as a number appeared to have closed down. 

These images are in memory of Dr Hutchings Goddard who laid the foundations for the science of rocket propulsion, using this tower (left) between 1930-1942 to launch liquid propellant rockets in order to develop means to explore extreme altitudes.

What Roswell looked like before the aliens came....

 

John Simpson Chisum (1824-1884) - the early west's most prominent cattleman, allegedly

 We picked up a Roswell Visitors’ guide but really all of the alien-themed sights were in close proximity to the International UFO museum and research centre on Main Street:

 
Everyone in Roswell is cashing in on the alien thing:

We spent nearly three hours in the Museum.  Fifty minutes of that was watching a documentary giving an overview of the ‘Roswell Incident’ in July 1947.  The museum states their primary goal is to provide information so the visitor is able to make up their own mind about the Roswell Incident, the UFOs and other possible extra-terrestrial phenomena.  Being a natural cynic I think that you can explain away most of the exhibits but, if it is all made up, you have to appreciate the scale of the effort this takes!  The film containing military personnel, reliable witnesses who all state that they were told not to discuss anything they saw must just be star actors.  The museum contains numerous typed exhibits which claim to be signed affidavits of many witnesses who either saw the craft or alien bodies first-hand, or were family members who received disclosures about this.  These can all be easily fabricated and attached to a name and a photograph of a supposed resident.  There was a lot of military presence in New Mexico in 1947, as the vast area known as White Sands to the West of Roswell is where the first atomic bombs were tested back in 1945 prior to the end of WWII.  Maybe the strange metallic-like debris that was discovered that day was part of military developments in technology and experiments that were being carried out in the area?  The military story appeared to change overnight and this is one thing that I find hard to explain away.  In 1947 Lt Walter Haut was serving as the Public relations Officer for Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).  He states that he was told by his superiors to write and distribute the now famous July 8^th article that appeared in newspapers and on radio around the World stating that the US military had recovered a ‘flying disc’. 

A mock-up of the Roswell 'flying disc'

But the very next day an army General released an article stating that the ‘saucer’ was actually a weather balloon.  There began what the museum states was the best known and most documented UFO cover-up. 
 

I don’t think it helps that since 1947 metal meant to be from the crash site has been confirmed to contain Earth metals and further to this, another large-scale dig at the crash site in 2002 failed to unearth anything more to explain the sightings. 

I have an open mind to the thought of other life in the universe.  That would make sense, in an ever-expanding universe why wouldn’t there be other life-supporting planets?  The documentary puts the theory forward that UFOs were not sighted until we started experimenting with nuclear fission.  If we cannot travel far from our planet what risk are we to other life forms?  UFO researchers argue that extra-terrestrials only needed to start ‘keeping an eye on us’ since our break-through with nuclear technology.  They also suggest that we are purposefully being drip-fed information and images of ETs so that when they come back in future (say for example when we’ve finished working out how to reach Mars!) we won’t all be shocked.  Whatever you think as an individual, It is certainly an interesting topic for debate – conspiracy theories within conspiracy theories.  If aliens and craft are real, why the need for a cover-up?  This photo (right) shows an alleged staged press photo showing weather-balloon material being held by the military as that which landed in Corona, New Mexico in 1947 to support the complex cover-up.

This is apparently what it really looked like!

But this may be the reason for the cover-up....

We had intended to try to visit the actual alleged crash site.  However, we quickly learnt that Corona, the location of the ranch, is about 3 hours north-west of Roswell and is also private land that you cannot access.  So, apart from spending quality time in the museum becoming more and more cynical about the accounts of alien visitations and even abductions, there was little else to do in Roswell – apart from to buy a bumper-sticker and shot glass for the collection of course!

Monday 30th January - Venturing into Mountain time

Completely at random, this morning I awoke shortly after 7am and realised that the sun was about to rise.  Huddled in a hoodie, camera in hand I snuck through to the front of the RV.  It was freezing and it turns out that the rising sun looks very much like the sunsets I had captured the previous two nights, only in reverse:

Is this sunrise or sunset?  Could be either to be honest!

I ran back under the covers until the RV had warmed up a little.

Time to move on again today, once we had sloped into the office to admit to breaking not one but TWO of their sand disks!  The ranger man couldn’t have been nicer.  It seems we are a rarity by being honest about it, most people just try to hide them when they’re broken.  He said ‘it’s no problem’ and that was that.  We raved about how beautiful the park is and he was sincerely grateful for our visit.  A really positive start to the day.

We set the Satnav for a PA site just outside Roswell, New Mexico and estimated a three and a half hour drive.  I took the first stint for some more mind-numbing scenery.  But we weren’t on the interstate for long, turning North onto Highway 285 towards New Mexico.  We felt sad to leave Texas, we love the State, the scale and variation is impressive.  Even now, having crossed the vast majority of the state I was surprised to see that El Paso, in the far west of Texas was still over 200 more miles away!

Crossing into New Mexico not only meant we hit State number 27, it also gave us an extra hour in the day as we moved to Mountain time.  Here we are at the time zone and State border (below), Simon even had a go at time-travelling as per the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film ‘Paul’!

  

 

New Mexico presented us with more wide open space but with added features, like a dam and here we are driving with the Guadalupe Mountains in the distance (right).  

We’d tried calling the RV site but got no reply, however only 30 minutes away we received a call back from the owner and headed straight there.  Apart from a smell hanging in the air that reminded us of Dodge (we are back in cattle country) the site was great, and only $15.50 a night!  The owner was really welcoming and we got into discussion about where we are heading after visiting Roswell tomorrow.  We keep changing our minds you see.  The original plan was to head north, well into Colorado where Simon wanted to see Pikes Peak, (a race track up a mountain or something) and Denver before heading West into Utah and onto Nevada.  But people have warned us that the Rocky Mountains are still too cold in February and we could get snow-bound.  So we’d postponed the idea of Colorado and Utah until March, but would we have time to drive that far across the States and back to the Coast to enter Canada by 8^th April?!  Balancing time and distance with us wanting to visit all 48 States is getting tricky!  Following our discussion this afternoon we may have a plan C!  Head North-West through New Mexico to see some amazing Indian architecture and head for the Four Corners monument… we can visit four states at the same time there! Then get across to Utah and on to more alien antics in Nevada!  It may all change again tomorrow, who knows? But I am really excited at the thought of the landscapes we will be travel through over the next couple of weeks.

Our friendly owner at the Midway RV park had just installed 5G Wi-Fi, time for blogging and laundry at the end of a really positive and easy day.

Sunday 29th January – Sand-surfing!

The office here opened at 830am.  I set an alarm and managed to prise myself out of bed around 9 to get dressed, get my bike out and cycle the mile and a half to pay our dues!  Luckily, apart from still being chilly after a sub-zero night, it was a glorious sunny day.  I paid the extra we owed and then debated whether to rent two sand disks (at $13) or buy one (at $11.75) for us to share in our down-hill exploits!  The disks are roughly 50cm in diameter and made of what you’d hope is quite tough plastic.  I rented two and made my way back to the RV.  Hills are a lot tougher one-handed it transpires! 

By the time we went out to walk the dunes it was T-shirt weather without a cloud in the sky.  It was difficult to see how far the dunes went on so we just aimed for the nearest, steepest ones to start practicing our skills.  The disks are probably for use by kids a lot smaller than us!  Simon’s cracked across within minutes but luckily was still semi-usable.  Mine also cracked by the end of our surfing – should’ve just bought us two and it wouldn’t have mattered at all if they broke then! It was a totally unique way to get our daily exercise – climbing the steep slopes was really tough work; two steps up, one step back as the sand melted away beneath our feet (my Fitbit says I’ve done 52 floors!).  But it was worth it for the slide down.  That is something I never expected to be doing in America, let alone Texas! 

 

Other than that, it was a relaxing day. We are very much in competition with who can learn Spanish the quickest on our Duo Lingo apps so make progress every chance we get.  We’re learning the useful stuff first of course; ‘Un oso es un animal’ for example which means ‘a bear is an animal’! 

I’ve changed my tactics with the blog too.  I swear that I am working hard on it every chance I get (apart from when I’m learning Spanish!) but don’t seem to be making much progress. I’m STILL two months behind!  But now I am writing the current day first, when it’s fresh in my mind, choosing and editing the photos I want to use for that day.  It should be faster as I won’t need to look things up.  Then I play catch-up with the days I am working on from the end of 2016.  Eventually, hopefully by the time you read this, I should be almost there.  That’s the plan anyway but I refuse to take short-cuts or miss anything important out for you readers....