Day 14: Roswell

Last night was the coldest night yet! We woke up to ice covering the windows on the inside. There were even little icicles forming on the rubber seal above our heads. It turns out we parked in a fairly industrial area, as we were awoken pretty early by trucks rumbling by. We got straight out on the road as we knew we had a fairly long drive ahead of us to Roswell.

Once we got on the road, our first order of business was breakfast. Hunger makes you do some funny things. Not seeing any rest stops for a while, I thought it would be a good idea to pull over and cook breakfast. Did I mention that I bit the bullet and bought a $30 propane stove? Well I did, and it works much bettter than the other one, lights straight away and everything. We had some bacon and some eggs and went about trying to cook them. There was frost on the ground and a bit of wind, which was apparently too much for this stove to combat in the cooking of our food. It took forever to cook the bacon, and I eventually gave up on the eggs. It was a lot of effort and frozen fingers for not much gain. The worst thing is, if we had of kept going a bit further, we would have seen that we came down out of the really high country to some warmer areas without the frost on the ground. If only we had topographical maps (it's always that bit of information you don't have isn't it).

We stopped at Santa Rosa, which isn't really on the way, being more East than we needed to travel. What Santa Rosa had was showers. These truckstop showers really aren't that bad. It's definitely a better alternative than booking into a hotel just for a shower. While we were waiting, we ate at the Carl's Jr. attached to the truckstop. The burgers are so big over here, it's a wonder people haven't starting evolving double jointed jaws to eat. You have to dislocate your jaw just to get it in in one piece.

After Santa Rosa, we headed straight to Roswell through some fairly bleak terrain. Still no trees, just some shrubs. The dirt has turned more golden from the red it was in the West. After a couple of hours drive we arrived in town. I don't know what I was expecting here, maybe more looneys running around the streets looking for aliens, or giant monuments or something. There wasn't any of that, it really was just a typical small town. We had already driven through dozens just like it.

We went too the International UFO Museum and Research Centre, which seemed to be housed in an old theatre. While it was interesting, there wasn't anything on display that could not be found elsewhere in books or in documentaries. Almost apologetically, the museum was filled with conceptual designs and drawings of what they intend their new purpose-built museum to look like. It looked maybe a little too ambitious, with giant flying saucer shaped structures, and several lecture halls and such, but I suppose if they can raise several millions of dollars, then it could be a reality.

My opinion of what happened in Roswell in 1947 is this: I wasn't there, so I don't know if any one persons testimony is true. Something happened, and it seems like there was a lot of military and government interest, followed by inistence that there was a perfectly simple and non-threatening explanation for everything. I'm not saying that there was a cover up, I'm just saying that if there was, this is precisely how it would look.