Thursday - Day Ten
For our New Mexico stop we initially thought it would be Albuquerque or even back down into Texas into El Paso, depending on how north or south we’d be, a quick drive through to get us into Arizona. Not once did I imagine we’d end up in Roswell, but there we were with our tin hats. I was a big fan of The X-Files growing up, I think there’s still a box of VHS cassettes collecting dust in my parents attic, which I should probably eBay. We didn’t quite know what to expect, at the very least we could say we’d been, not quite a bucket list destination but not far off.
Almost everything in Roswell is riding that spaceship, from small businesses and local motels to national chains such as McDonald’s and Dunkin’. It’s up there as one of the cheesiest places I’ve visited, and we didn’t hate it. There’s a UFO Museum that anchors downtown, it mostly houses a collection of articles, newsreels and movie posters along with human size aliens disembarking a flying saucer that spews smoke every few minutes - it’s good for the ‘gram. You don’t need to spend much time there, we found that out the hard when we shortchanged ourselves at the winery in Texas to make it to the museum before closing, a regrettable decision one in which I’m entirely to blame.
It doesn’t take long to explore the city, though there is a lot of street art and alien encounters to take photos of, some definitely better than others. Beyond aliens there’s really not much else to do, so we drove up to the city-limits and watched the sunset over the desert, grabbed a bite to eat then went to bed. We stayed at the Super 8 in case you were wondering, I recommend sleeping in your clothes, just in case.
After Roswell we drove through the Mescalero Reservation to White Sands National Monument, the two couldn’t be any different - from lush green landscape of the forests to barren white sands, which is a sort of desert in the desert, and also shares its home with a missile testing range. The sands are blinding yet cooling, we were there for less than hour but caught a lot of sun without even realizing it. If you’re ever in the Tularosa area, and why wouldn’t you be, check it out and take a sled with you too.
