Saturday we took a drive south to Roswell for an overnight stay. The drive took about three hours, it’s around two hundred miles, through cattle country. Lots and lots of cattle, with the odd sheep and llama farm mixed in. The land is not as mountainous as around Santa Fe, but with rolling hills, and dried arroyo beds cutting through the landscape it was a very scenic drive. It turned out to be an easy drive, with very good roads.

Roswell is a town of about 50,000 people – and much larger than we expected. The alien theme is apparent almost as soon as you drive in, with Galaxy Car Wash – Galactic Sushi, it’s how we roll… etc. There are little aliens peeking out all over the local businesses. Even the large chains get in on the act! Arby’s proclaims that “Aliens are welcome“, KFC proudly puts the Colonel right beside a towering alien, and even the USPS gets in on the act.

I thought the USPS R2D2 post box was one of the best alien icons. It was really well done, with a great paint job… and hey, he has his own website! (Although when I went to it, I was denied access, which is not all that surprising. I’m not a Jedi Master yet – I can’t whack the little globes with my helmet on… YET!) Even the local community center got in on the whimsical act… this carving is right in front of the main doors.

There are of course, lots and lots of shops and “museums” dedicated to the Roswell Incident of 1947 (or 1957 if you believe the government). The first we entered was called Area 51, and wouldn’t you know it, they required Pam’s help right away. We hadn’t been in the place for more than five minutes when a call went out for a nurse to assist with an alien who had gone into cardiac arrest. The doctor in the lab had gone for coffee, and only the guards were left. It’s not easy being a nurse on vacation!

Afterwards, a couple of friends invited us to relax and have a few beers. They were pretty grateful, and they told us that the government has been keeping them there since the crash. They give them old computers, so they can’t access the internet, and it’s been tough for them, since Facebook was their idea.

At any rate, the next stop was the museum, which was not very well done. They now charge five bucks to get in, but the displays look like a high school got together and did it for a science project. It’s kinda sad really, because a lot of the evidence they have, could really be persuasive if they did a more professional job. I get the impression that most people in Roswell don’t really take it all that seriously. Although one store in particular had a fellow who did seem to be serious about the whole thing, he was definitely in the minority.

The city itself has put up a museum and cool statue of Dr. Robert Goddard, the man who basically figured out how to launch rockets. They have kept the tower that he repeatedly launched liquid fueled rockets from, right in the spot from which he did the experiments. And that’s right on Main Street, across the street from Arby’s!

Roswell is not all aliens – another famous citizen was John Chisum – one of the early cattle barons. He was portrayed in the movies by no less than John Wayne, so you know he had to be something special! He was contemporaneous with Billy the Kid and was instrumental in having Pat Garrett track him down. They were apparently on friendly terms but had a falling out when Chisum failed to pay Billy what he felt he was owed for his part in the Lincoln County Wars.

The drive back to Santa Fe was in a bit of rain, so we stopped in Encino and took this picture of an old clunker of a house. Encino seems to really have hit the skids, with most shops and gas stations and homes crumbling. It’s population is only 94, but it did have a famous citizen, the 8th Governor of New Mexico! It fell into disrepair as a result of the rail line discontinuing the depot there…

It was a fun couple of days, though, and definitely worth the drive to see everything.