Friday, October 21
We left the Holloman Air Force Base FamCamp about 10:00 am this morning, which has pretty much become our standard departure time for travel days. We adjust it according to how many miles we plan to travel on any given day though.
We opted to drive a little further route going around the mountains rather than over them via highway 82 which goes through Cloudcroft. The route we took ended up being 196 miles versus the 150 mile trek over the mountain. But we didn’t have to subject the truck or trailer to winding, steep mountain roads.
Instead we took 70/54 to Tularosa where we followed 70 through the Mescalero Apache Reservation. It happened to be one of the nicest reservations I’ve ever seen. Very well-kept, with nice newer buildings. There was a beautiful church sitting high on a hill overlooking the reservation.
Baby needs a new pair of shoes?
We drove through Ruidoso and passed Ruidoso Downs Race Track and Casino. Shortly after passing through Ruidoso Michael called for a ‘relief’ stop. We watched for a place to pull into but came up empty so we did the next best thing…we pulled over on the side of the road and used our own bathroom!
Cow friends
We happened to stop right behind a pick up truck pulling a trailer full of cattle. Two women were hauling the cattle to Clovis but were just stopping to make sure that the trailer and cattle were all riding ok.
UFO Museum, Roswell NM
We made a pit stop at the International UFO Museum in Roswell. Who could pass that up? With our military IDs our admission was just $3.00 each (regular admission is $5.00). Since the museum is on Main Street there is much parking for a big rig but Mikey found a nice spot on a side street behind the museum.
Cute alien exhibit with smoke, lights and noises
The first half of the museum is dedicated to the July 1947 incident in Roswell where Mac Brazel claimed that a UFO crashed near the ranch that he worked on. He showed pieces of what he said was debris from the cash to his neighbors. They tried burning and cutting the material to no avail.
After reporting the incident to the sheriff, Brazel was detained by the military for 6 days at which point he recanted his story saying that it was a weather balloon that crashed. He never spoke of the incident afterward.
The Alien, debris and newspapers were used in the 1994 movie Roswell.
The exhibit is peppered with affidavits from people from Roswell, military members and family and neighbors of Brazel all basically stating that it was not a weather balloon but a space ship with 4 aliens, 3 of which died, that crashed that day in July 1947.
All very interesting and certainly makes you wonder.
The second half of the museum covers the 3 different types of ‘Close Encounters’, sightings from around the world, pictures of UFOS and IFOs. There are also testimonies written by people claiming to have experienced contact with other worldly beings. The mystery of Crop Circles is also covered….are they real or hoaxes?
All very interesting and certainly makes you wonder.
All and all a great way to spend a couple of hours off the road getting a little stretching in. There is a gift shop at the end of the museum (of course!) with anything you can possibly imagine alien. There are also several business around the museum selling alien merchandise or named alien this or that to draw you in. We did not get drawn in.
The oil patch is calling…
As we passed through Artesia we were reminded that it’s almost time to go back to the oil patch when we saw a Halliburton yard, an oil refinery, various other oil field services and a park with a pump jack on display. There has been a lot of oil drilling work going on in New Mexico the last year or so. While the south Texas oil fields have seen a huge decline in drilling many gate guards have taken jobs in New Mexico.
As we continued south of Artesia the oil boom here in New Mexico became more and more apparent as we started seeing more and more pump jacks, storage tanks and separators. Sometimes the pump jacks went back as far as the eye could see.
Filling up with water we didn’t need.
We pulled onto the road to Brantley Lake State Park about 3:30ish but had to wind our way around the lake and finally arrived at the park about 3:45 pm. As we entered the campground we stopped to fill our tank with water as we thought our site was electric only. However, one of the camp hosts stopped by and told us that all of the sites had water. A plus for our $14.00 per night site.
Brantley Lake State Park – Site 18 over looking the lake.
I’d made reservations several months ago so check in was pretty easy…actually it was non-existent as there was no one at the fee station so we just made our way to our site. We found the site easily enough and got back in and settled pretty easy. Michael had no trouble whatsoever getting the satellite tuned in and hasn’t had any real issues since we left Utah. Just wait until we get to Ft. Sam next week….it’s always a bear to get the satellites to align just right!
We are here for 2 nights so that we can visit Carlsbad Cavern before moving on to Texas on Sunday.