New Mexico, Roswell: The Truth Was Out There

The UFO Mueseum in Roswell was actually much more interesting than we both thought it would be
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Originally, we hadn't planned to visit Roswell during our road trip across southwestern United States because we had little time in New Mexico to cover the other main areas of interest there. However, we changed our plan and increased the time that we would spend in the state, and then we redirected our intended route from southern Texas by entering New Mexico from the middle of Texas. By going this way, we were able to spend the first night in Roswell and then travel southwest to a few more destinations that we intended to see whilst there.

We were both excited about entering New Mexico, since it marked the beginning of our southwest US road trip
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Roswell had become famous due to an incident that occurred in July 1947, at a ranch 75 miles northwest of the town. A rancher named William Brazel discovered a large amount of unusual debris scattered widely over his ranch. Since we are both avid "X-Files" fans, the decision to visit the place was paramount; we also wanted to know more about what William found on his ranch. The drive from Austin, Texas, to Roswell lasted a total of 11 hours (540 miles), which included a few stops along the way to allow us to take a break. The scenery was dull and generally flat, yawn...

It would be fitting to follow in Mulder and Scully's footsteps and order a large pizza to be delivered to our motel

It's good to know that the restaurants in Roswell were open to serving patrons from all races
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Kyle had been to New Mexico before on a ski trip with some friends of his from university, but he was looking forward to exploring the state when it wasn't wintertime. It was Dan's first time to the southwestern state, another one to add to his ever-increasing tally. We were both excited about what we would find there during our trip, as we knew little about the barren land. With the mystery around what happened in Roswell in 1947 enticing people to visit the region for the past several decades, Roswell was a place that we had both wanted to visit for a long time.

This grasshopper joined us for our road trip when we stopped off to buy gas in a small town in Texas, but he flew away, literally, after we had picked up more speed on the highway
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The Roswell UFO Incident involved the recovery of the materials found on Brazel's farm, something which has since become the subject of intense speculation, rumour, questioning and research. The International UFO Museum and Research Centre in Roswell was a non-profit corporation dedicated to the collection and preservation of materials and information in written, audio and visual formats that were relevant to the 1947 Roswell crash and other unexplained phenomena related to UFO Research; the museum was organised to inform the public about what has come to be known as "The Roswell Incident". During our time in the museum, we came across many widely divergent views on what actually happened and an intensely passionate debate over what evidence can or should be believed.

Even the streetlamps in Roswell had been influenced by previous alien invaders
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The United States military maintained that what was recovered was a top-secret weather research balloon that had crashed. However, many UFO proponents believed the wreckage was of a crashed alien spacecraft and that the military covered up the craft's recovery. The incident has turned into a widely-recognized and referenced pop culture phenomenon and, for some, Roswell has become synonymous with "UFO" and likely ranks as the most famous alleged UFO incident in the world.

Our arrival in Roswell was late in the day because we had to drive so far from Austin; it had gotten dark just as we were pulling into the outskirts of the city. Our first mission for the evening was to find a place to stay, a motel since it was dark and we hadn't gotten up the nerve to set up camp in the dark yet. We had received a tent from Kyle's dad and some sleeping mats from Kyle's mum so we were ready to camp along the way from New Mexico to Los Angeles. Even though we were well prepared, we needed to break ourselves gently into the whole "camping on a roadtrip" thing (who can blame us with the bears, coyotes, scorpions, tarantulas, etc, etc).

The UFO-shaped McDonald's was very enticing but we skipped having a meal there to protect ourselves from being abducted
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The "Southwest USA" Lonely Planet guide that we were using to navigate our way out west had informed us that the main street in Roswell had several "cheap" motels where we could crash for the night, so we headed in that direction. After being astounded by some of the extortionately high motel room prices, we found a decent (?) bargain at The National 9 Inn, where we paid $40 (about £20) for a room.

Anyone reading this entry may think that we are cheap, but the truth is that travelling for one year on a budget meant that we had to be careful with our accommodation choices. Unfortunately, in the US, most motels seemed to be in the $40 and up range, so we ended up having to fork over more money than we had initially budgeted. Looking back on our road trip, we would have camped much more than we did, had we known how easy it was to get things set up; we unfortunately discovered the ease, and fun, of it all a little bit too late.

The military educational institution in Roswell had several nice buildings, including this one
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There were many things in our car and we unpacked them all after we checked into our motel room. We didn't want to chance anyone breaking into the car and stealing the tent, sleeping bags, coolers or other items that we had in the back of our Ford Edge, the SUV that we rented in Austin for the next month during our road trip. Even though we religiously unpacked the car each night for the first few nights, we soon gave that up and only took in the most valuable things, or things that would melt in extreme heat.

There were several souvenir shops on Roswell's main street with an alien theme
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To celebrate the official start of our southwest road trip, and one day gone out of a month, we thought it would be fitting to follow in Mulder and Scully's footsteps and order a large pizza to be delivered to our motel, to eat while we talked over business for the following day. Since we were hiding out in a motel in Roswell, just like the two famous "X-Files" stars did in one of the earlier episodes in the series, we thought it was fitting when we ordered a large, Brooklyn-style pizza from Domino's. That seemed to be the pizza restaurant choice in town - it was advertised all over the motel room!

Dan asked this alien if he could have his picture taken with it, but he got no response; as you can see, we decided to take the photo anyway, but Dan disappeared for the rest of the day and can't remember anything that happened during that time
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Both of us slept really well that evening, tired from the day's driving and full from all of the pizza that we ate. The next morning came a little too early, but we were excited about walking through the main street in Roswell and checking out the UFO Museum. National 9 Inn offered coffee and a light continental breakfast option of cereal and sweet pastries, and we ate whilst figuring out what we had time to do in town before hitting the road again.

Since the museum was the main point of interest for us, we headed down the main street towards it, taking pictures along the way of the New Mexico Military Institute, a UFO-shaped McDonald's, an Arby's that welcomed aliens and a few other interesting things that you will have to find out about by looking at the photo album for this journal entry. At the museum, we were enthralled by the numerous exhibits there and spent an hour reading the various newspaper articles and letters from the government, as well as affidavits taken from key witnesses. An hour in a museum was actually pretty good for us, since we both had lost interest in museums due to visiting so many during the first half of the year when we were in Asia. The traveller spark was reignited in UFO country, but we won't dare tell you which way we are both leaning to believe about the alien conspiracy!

During the drive from Austin, Texas, to Roswell, we passed a unique fruit stand that was very heavily decorated with Texas stars
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Our next destination in New Mexico was a historic town called Lincoln, which was a national landmark. We left Roswell just around noon in order to get to Lincoln in time to see the place before moving on to a subsequent destination that day. So that we don't get ahead of ourselves, you better click the "next journal entry" link because we aren't saying anything else about Lincoln, aliens, or government conspiracies, nor anything else that is green with a funny round head. By the way, New Mexico was the 9th state that we visited in the US during the "US and A" portion of our trip during our 2007 travels.