Current Location: Albuquerque, NM, N 35 05.500', W 106 39.997', elev. 5002 ft.

On Friday, after posting, I walked around downtown Roswell, NM. Rowsell is a very interesting city.


Because of the streetlights downtown I assumed Roswell would be a huge tourist trap sort of place, with several attractions and junk stores dedicated to the UFO phenomena, and the events of July 4-8 1947. I was pleasantly surprised that although all the tourism of the city surrounds the UFO phenomena, the city does not go overboard. There were a few stores selling memorabilia, and only one real UFO attraction, the International UFO Museum and Research Center (IUFOMRC). The IUFOMRC is situated in an old movie theater in the heart of the city.



To my very pleasant surprise, the museum is free to the public, and is therefore highly recommended. I dropped several dollars into the donation bucket, and also paid $1 for the museum audio tour, just because of my surprise at it being free. The first thing you notice inside the museum is a large map of the United States, and another of the world, where visitors are asked to put in pins from their home location. The map is cleared at the beginning of each month. I was there on the 16th of July, and already the USA map had thousands of pins. The museum claims they are there to present the plain facts of not only the famous Roswell incident in 1947 and the subsequent government action, but also the plain facts of the UFO phenomena in general. They invite the public to draw their own conclusions about the evidence and what exists in the in universe. I think this is a noble aim, but I do think they tend to steer to one side of the UFO argument :)

Here are the facts of the Roswell incident.
1. Something crashed on July 4th 1947, 40 or so miles outside of the city.
2. The military recovered the crash debris on July 6th and 7th, and told the media a "flying saucer" had crashed and bodies were recovered.
3. A few days later, the military stated that the crashed object was a weather balloon, and retracted their previous statements about flying saucers and bodies.

The IUFOMRC does a fantastic job of separating themselves from the crackpot, tin-foil hat segment though, and sort of set themselves up from a scientific standpoint, stating merely that there are objects that so far traditional science has not been able to explain, but that traditional scientists aren't trying to even study this phenomena. A walk through the research center of the museum shows this scientific side, as you will find volumes of eyewitness accounts of strange occurrences, abduction studies, and debunked "evidence".

While I'm not going to say I believe UFOs are aliens visiting earth in space craft, I will say that the phenomena is something I have enjoyed from an entertainment standpoint over the years, hearing the various arguments on each side. I do believe the universe is too great and life is too hardy for us to be alone, and I do believe that there are plenty of physics problems in our own backyards which we do not yet have explanations for. The idea of alien visitation is improbable but not impossible, so I have an open mind.

The museum itself is a little run down, and lacks a certain clean visual style, as many of the exhibits are merely bad photocopies of newspaper articles, which unfortunately lends the feeling of something un-authentic, but the place is well worth the price of admission. Here are the photos I took in Roswell, all are of the IUFOMRC. I had a neat surprise, as one of the very first exhibits detailing the initial UFO fever in 1947 had a photocopy from my hometown "newspaper" (I hesitate to call it that) the Salem Evening News.



I left Roswell at about 3:30 PM, and headed west on US 380, and eventually southwest on US 70 and US 54, until I reached White Sands National Monument. I got there at about 7 PM, and I was afraid the monument would be closed and I'd have to visit it on saturday, but lucky for me, not only was it open, but they had several evening programs. Driving into the monument there are nothing but huge white sand dunes. If not for the cactus and desert plants, you'd swear you were in Troy, NY in the middle of winter. In fact, they even allow sledding, and sell saucers at the ranger station. It is an amazing site, very picturesque and photogenic.

I signed up for a sunset walk through the dunes. The tour was given by a geologist who was as much in awe of the place as the tourists were. The sand is gypsum, which dissolves readily in water, and in fact, can dissolve on our skin. Gypsum is the main component in drywall, and also can be found in consumables such as lipstick, toothpaste and ice cream. White Sands is about 250 square miles and the next largest open air gypsum collection in the world is only 8 square miles, because of the conditions required for open air gypsum. The gypsum has to have a source (it is completely surrounded by mountains, which provide the mineral). It has to dissolve in water (there is a lake near the monument), but the water can't escape the valley via a river, or else it would take the gypsum with it. The lake has to be dry quite often, so that the dissolved crystals can move about via the wind. This creates the dunes. The sand is very fine, and because it is white, is cool to the touch, even in the very hot sun. The sunset tour provided many geological insights, and many great photo opportunities.





This article title is a lyric from a very famous song, and I thought it was neat in conjunction with the top middle photo

You can view all the magnificent (if I do say so myself!) photos here.

At some point in the park, I realized that the white sands and the quite of the desert and the harmony all around me was a great place to sit down and enjoy myself, and sort of space out and meditate, so I did that for a little while. Shortly after the sunset tour ended, there was another program deeper into the monument, a short video with the history of the park, and the missile range to the north of the park. The park is just a small part of the White Sands desert, the rest of which is owned by the military, the White Sands Missile Range. In fact, sometimes access to the park is restricted and US 70 can be closed for up to two hours at a time when military operations are being conducted. The video explained that there are upwards of 900 debris fields just within the park itself, including missiles, bombs, and crashed planes. The end of the movie was, oddly, a tribute to the shuttle Columbia and its astronauts. There is a NASA installation close to the monument, and apparently, Columbia's first mission (the first space shuttle mission, actually) landed on the sand in the missile range. At the very end of the video, the park ranger gave us all a surprise. I lucked out with the timing of my trip, because the surprise is something that is only available a couple times per year, and only a handful of people have ever seen it. I will detail the surprise in my next post, as it involves a bit of a drive, and my saturday activities.

I left the monument at about 8:30, and drove out to US 70, and from there, drove north on US 54 to the east of the missile range, until I reached Carrizozo, NM, where I stopped for the night. (I also set up the telescope and looked at the amazing sky for a while). Driving through the desert at night with the windows down and no cars or towns for miles, is something I'll always remember, and something I'd recommend for anyone. The serenity and the peace makes you feel that this is your place, your country, your time. You feel ownership, and you feel belonging. Time and place are usually owners of us, but not in the desert at night.