Roswell

We decided to take a day off from Route 66.  So we booked the same hotel for a second night here in Santa Rosa, NM and took a side trip to Roswell, about 120 miles away.

The terrain on the way was pretty flat and very dry, with almost nothing on it save for the odd well and small groups of cattle.  The view reminded me of some parts of southeastern Arizona, but on an even larger scale, without the mountain ranges to break things up.

The day started sunny and a cool 55F but got up to 85F by the end of the afternoon.  

We may have left Route 66 but there was still 50’s type diners:

Roswell has done a pretty good job of milking an alleged incident that happened over 60 years ago, and manages to take itself not too seriously:

We spent about an hour in the UFO Museum and Research Center, which contains a lot of hearsay evidence about the alleged 1947 incident and various government coverups, including various deathbed affidavits of people involved.  It then degenerated into third-hand accounts, and began documenting "related" phenomena such as crop-circles, and a Mayan stone carving that purportedly shows a human figure riding in a Gemini-style space capsule.  (But turn it sideways, it looks kinda like a Tron motorcycle.)  Someone has helpfully translated the various symbols around the edges as "crossing between galaxies" and "symbol for combustible fuel".  Sorry.  You lost me at crop-circles.

I have no doubt something happened in 1947 that the government wanted to hush up, but I doubt it was extra-terrestrial in origin.   We were in a cold war arms race with the Soviets, who had just exploded an atomic weapon about five years sooner than anyone had expected. 

We were invited to take as many photos as we wished, but honestly, nothing seemed all that noteworthy.  To me, what was more interesting was the defunct business across the street.

The faded letters read: "Weather Balloon Tracking Center"

We headed home via the Billy the Kid Museum in Fort Sumner, which is about 10% Billy the Kid and 90% interesting junk his grandfather started collecting in 1910 and had enough to fill a museum in 1952.  (Example: An itinerant undertakers kit, with tools, circa 1890.)

A local truck parked outside; notice rifle rack!

There were several cool cars:

and some neat police badges

A few miles down the road was the actual grave of Billy the Kid, buried with a few of his crew:

They had to cage it off because people kept stealing Billy the Kids footstone (lower left).  Once it went missing for 26 years.

Returning to Santa Rosa, we had dinner at a famous roadhouse:

Elfrida and Neil blackmail material