The Truth is Out There...

After experiencing the fantastic sight of hundreds of thousands of bats flying out of the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns at sunset, we headed to our campsite for the night. In spite of the fact that it was the Carlsbad KOA, it turned out to be close to an hour and a half away from the park. We decided, therefore, that rather than head back there in the morning, adding three hours of driving to our day, we’d save the cave for another trip.

The upside of this was that it gave us more time in Roswell (hey, we were driving right through! How could we not stop?) This turned out to be necessary since, rather than the 1 hour I’d allotted us, we ended up spending 4 hours there. Unbelievable.

First stop was the International UFO Museum. In flagrant disregard for the posted sign, Rob insisted on parking in this lot.

This lovely creature greeted us as we entered into the museum. Once there, we learned the complete history of the “Roswell Incident”, saw many photos, and read many signed affidavits. In spite of all of this, Rob still doesn’t believe in UFOs.

Matt, however, was quite intrigued by the recreation of the floating alien and insisted on having his picture taken with it.

I will admit that I expected much more of this than there actually appeared to be. There were a handful of cheesy, tacky gift shops but that was pretty much it. We were most disappointed not to find a UFO themed restaurant for lunch and ate at the much more mundane Billy Ray’s, which is a bar.

If I could have found one of these inflatable aliens, complete with ray gun, I totally would have bought it for Rob. Unfortunately, none of the tacky gift shops we explored seemed to have one for sale. As an interesting note, many of the stores were without much, if any, air conditioning and kept their lights turned way down. I found it odd.

And since our connection here at the Dinosaurland KOA is excellent, look for several posts to come!!