September 7, 2011 - Welcome to Roswell, the town made famous for the 1947 crashing of an unidentified flying object! The town definitely seems to embrace its extraterrestrial roots; and anything and everything alien related can be seen everywhere; from billboards to the design of the street lamps, aliens can be found in every corner of Roswell. Even the McDonald's looks like a UFO that crash landed. If you are looking for aliens or alien paraphernalia, this is definitely the spot to find them.
The International UFO Museum and Research Center
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| The unassuming front of the UFO museum. |
We took the obligatory tour of the UFO museum located in downtown Roswell. While the layout of the museum was sparse, the amount of UFO research was enough to get you thinking about aliens. The main showcase of the museum was linked to the Roswell Incident and included a collection of documents from 1947. Additionally, many types of alien artwork was found, presumably collected from various parts of the globe from UFO and alien enthusiasts.
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| Weird alien. |
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| Creepy alien. |
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| A fake alien autopsy. |
The most amazing depiction of alien life, however, was the large flying saucer with a group of aliens underneath apparently trying to communicate with the depictions of humans who have come to greet them. The full-sized aliens are something that shouldn't be missed. On the hour, there is smoke that billows out spinning saucer accompanied by an audio clip of weird music (think B style science fiction movies from yesteryear) and a light display. It was fun to watch, but at the same time, you didn't want other people to know you were watching it. Hokey, I know, but it made me feel that I was really in Roswell, New Mexico.
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| The alien show, sorry no YouTube videos for you. |
As an interesting side note, when you go into the museum you receive a large oval sticker. This lets the staff know that you have already paid the admission. However, Bruce and I did not keep these stickers, but instead put them on a metal depiction of an alien outside of the museum gift shop. It seemed to us to be local tradition since the two-dimensional alien was completely covered with the same stickers we received.
Downtown Shopping
After hanging out in the museum for a while, Bruce and I did some shopping. We walked through downtown Roswell to find a vast assortment of shops catering to the tourists. If you couldn't find it in the museum gift shop, you could find it here.
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| A picture of three aliens. |
This is where Bruce and I did the most part of our shopping that day; and believe me, we got a lot of things. Shirts, bumper stickers, toys, and books. We got a lot of it. However, you can't just go to Roswell without taking something back with you; I think it’s a law. Interestingly, Bruce and I picked up more bumper stickers here than anywhere else in our trip combined. Perhaps we felt that this would be our last opportunity to decorate the trailer or, perhaps, we just got caught up in the sheer Roswell experience. Either way, we had enough bumper stickers to choke a horse…twice.
Before we left the museum parking lot I took a couple more pictures of the UFO mecca.
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| Aliens apparently don't drink Pepsi. |
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| I got a chuckle at this painting on the side of the UFO museum. |
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| Pretty much everything the UFO museum is about. |
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| A strange mixture of Southwestern and extraterrestial. |
Back to the Campground
We headed back to the campground to get ready for our next part of the journey, one that would finally signal the end of the trip for me. At the campground we had another campfire and roasted marshmallows. It was a way to relax and hang out with each other in quite company, watching the stars above the dark landscape. We went to bed with the sound of coyotes howling in the distance.
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