Day 3 - Oklahoma City to Roswell NM

I was looking so forward to this!  We'd always heard about Roswell, aliens, UFO's, and Area 51.  And this year was the 60th anniversary of the UFO/Weather Balloon Crash.  So, off we went to see the sights.

We got to see quite a few sights along the way to Roswell.  We went through Yukon OK, the hometown of Garth Brooks.  They're so proud of him, it's painted on their huge water tower, and a street is named after him.  Then on through Texas.

"there's a jackrabbit"... "there's another one!" "and another!".

It was probably the area of Texas we were crossing through, but it seemed to be a pretty poor area.  Even saw the remnants of an abandoned drive in theater - which made me a little sad.

An interesting place was Shamrock, TX.  We stopped at a Chevron station to fill up, and there was a sign that indicated that the building that was the model for "Ramon's" in the movie Cars was a block away.  Of course, we had to check it out.  It was the coolest art-deco building I've seen.  The Pixar illustrators took a road trip cross country on Route 66 to get ideas for Cars, and stopped in Shamrock - and found Ramon's Body Shop.  (We found Mater in Seligman AZ, but more about that later!)

Cows! Cows! More Cows!  Passed tons of livestock farms.  At one point, we thought we were going to get to Roswell too late to take in the sights - we were halted on the interstate by a wreck between two semis.  We decided to do what a lot of others were doing - since the interstate runs parallel to Route 66, we crossed the median and went over onto Route 66.  Then we found the wreck had closed not only the interstate, but also Route 66 - we weren't going anywhere.  That's ok though - we got to spend some time just sitting on the Mother Road.

On to Roswell!  Everywhere you look there are alien signs and pictures.  I'm sure most of that is for us tourists....  but it was cute.  It is also the home of the New Mexico Military Institute - Owen Wilson attended there.  Roswell was a very clean, well kept city.  It was hot - 107, but it really didn't feel that bad - honest!

We saw the UFO museum, and went through several souvenir shops.  It was a blast.  I must have bought a dozen T Shirts.  I even got a litle alien topper for the truck antenna!

Had a fantastic burger in the Cover Up Cafe.  The cafe is decorated like a military installation, complete with a jeep outside.  Inside, there's fake monitors all over that are monitoring the skies for UFO's and Weather Balloons.  It's really cool, and I highly recommend the food.

We got there a couple of days ahead of the UFO Festival, so we avoided the crowds.  I guess they get about 100,000 people in town for that!

We spent the night in a very nice Fairfield Inn, then got up early to head for our next stop on our journey.  It was a little spooky, as there were no other cars on the highway at all.  We did get a jackrabbit salute!  It was hilarious - every 100 feet or so, there was a jackrabbit sitting on the side of the road.  I was like, "there's a jackrabbit"... "there's another one!"  "and another!".  One little jackrabbit didn't get the memo though - he was facing away from the road!