Roswell, New Mexico

Because of the length of the trip from Santa Fe to our next goal, Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we decided to stop in route at the town of Roswell, New Mexico, home of a UFO Museum. While we were vaguely aware of some purported claim of some UFO sighting at Roswell, we really didn’t know the details. Fortunately, the Roswell UFO Museum and Research Center provided all of the details we could ever want……and then some…… After reading through all of the write ups, affidavits from participants and newspaper articles, we were prepared to accept that something unusual happened in July 1947 on the outskirts of Roswell. Thanks to what appears to have been a clumsy effort by the army air force at the nearby airbase, we will never know whether Roswell was a sight of the crash landing of a UFO or only the site of the crash of a weather balloon. There are enough holes in the story told by the army as to raise doubts about their weather balloon theory. But the amateurish nature of the claims being made by the UFO proponents makes one a bit leery about accepting the UFO theory. But what is undisputed is the amusing way in which the city of Roswell has embraced this alien touch. The inflatable alien dolls outside the nearby gift shops, and the alien faces painted on the lampposts might be no more than one would expect in the vicinity of the one and only UFO museum and research center in the country. However, when you see a McDonald’s Restaurant made to look like an alien spaceship and the sign on the Wal-Mart store bearing the picture of the green alien face with the big eyes, you know that you are no longer in Alexandria, Virginia!!!!!!!!