Sunny & hot
250 miles
I arose at 8.30 and had yet another breakfast from the garage down the road before leaving at 9.45. I stopped briefly in downtown Carlsbad to take a quick photograph of the Stevens Inn, then continued through the town to the Living Desert State Park. As I paid the entrance fee and signed the visitors' book, the lady on reception noticed that my surname was Stevens, as hers was too. I asked as to the Stevens Inn and Stevens Street in the town, but she was no relation to the pioneer after whom they were named.
An attraction of this park had been that my guidebook stated that among the animals and plants of the Chihuahuan Desert on view was a roadrunner. I asked as to the roadrunner, and was disappointed to learn that it was no more, having died in an accident involving a tree. After failing to acquire a replacement from other zoos, they had been donated two roadrunner chicks, which were as yet too young to be on public view.
There was a great variety of animals and plants to see, despite the absence of roadrunners. Among the many large mammals were bison, elk, pronghorn antelopes, a black bear, a cougar, a bobcat, and the bizarre imposter of the American badger, with its flattened face and big ears giving it nothing like the elegance of its European relatives. There were many birds too, including bald and golden eagles, some hawks, and several species of owl, generally sitting around with a look that said ``go away, I'm trying to sleep''.
Smaller creatures were represented too, with some spiders and numerous snakes. Several of them could be heard rattling their tails angrily if I stood too close to the glass, and they had a rare example of an albino rattlesnake. There were plenty of plants too, mostly placed around the trail, but a large cactus house contained a wide selection under climate controlled conditions. The heat inside was such that it was a relief to be outside again.
I left around 12.15 to begin the drive northwards towards Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The town of Roswell, with its extra-terrestrial visitors, was 76 miles to the north and I decided to head there for lunch.
Upon entering Roswell, I found a town which is a slightly strange mix of a normal US town and one cashing in on its alleged alien connections. I parked in a side-street, picked up a map of the town in the information centre, and went into a neighbouring branch of Denny's for lunch, having a barbecue chicken burger.
Refreshed, I walked down the road to the so-called ``UFO Museum and Research Center'', feeling that I couldn't exactly pass through Roswell and ignore flying saucers, little green men and the like.
Roswell's fame revolves around an incident in July 1947, widely reported at the time, in which an unidentified flying object crashed on ranchland some distance to the northwest of Roswell. The local Sheriff was called out but the military were quickly involved, and the crash of a flying saucer was reported in the local press. Over the years various stories have emerged, giving considerable uncertainty as to the events that unfolded -- tales tell of silvery materials like nothing known on Earth, small humanoid bodies with large heads, and even of a pilot being found alive. The military put out a story that the object that crashed had been nothing more than a weather balloon.
The museum, unsurprisingly, had no actual UFOs on display, but did have a large number of articles about the events of 1947, and other alleged sightings of aliens and/or UFOs. The museum instructed me to ``make up my own mind'' as to what actually happened in 1947, and I did so -- my opinion remained unchanged. Evidently something had happened in 1947, but Roswell in 1947 had the world's only nuclear bomber base, and the state was and still is full of vast areas of military land. So what was more probable, that interstellar travellers came several light-years only to hit the ground in featureless countryside in the middle of nowhere, or that some secretive military test went wrong and there were good reasons to keep quiet about it? Believing the former certainly has done Roswell no harm. In a state in which a small town can rename itself after a radio show, what better way to get publicity than to declare a town the first port of call for ET?
Roswell has one other claim to fame, and it was to learn about this that I drove a mile or so up the road to the town's museum. This had a couple of rooms devoted to Robert Goddard, one of the pioneers of rocketry. He came to Roswell in 1930 to conduct his experiments, having been gently but firmly persuaded that they were best conducted away from more populated areas. Thus Roswell can claim a connection with the human race's own adventures into space. The museum had a recreation of Goddard's workshop, examples of some of his rockets, and videos showing footage of his experiments.
By the time I was done with the Goddard exhibits it was approaching 5.00, and I wanted to make considerable progress northwards that evening, so skipped the museum's other offerings, which seemed nothing particularly out of the ordinary. Immediately ahead of me was a 96 mile drive to the next nontrivial human habitation, so I refuelled the car before leaving town.
The drive northwards to the small town of Vaughn was uneventful, with a fast road across an almost flat desert landscape. I made good progress, and took a quick break in Vaughn to decide what to do next. I had been considering heading all the way up to Santa Fe, another 97 miles to the northwest, but in view of the fact I would be arriving fairly late, and that there were places I wanted to visit in the Albuquerque region, I decided against it and to head towards Albuquerque instead and stop at one of the towns along interstate I-40.
I reached I-40 44 miles northwest of Vaughn and headed westwards for another 20 minutes to the small town of Moriarty, a town whose chief claim to fame is not a criminal mastermind but an annual bean-growing festival. Nevertheless it was a convenient place to stop, and I checked into a Super 8 motel around 7.30. I rested for a while, watching the American version of ``Whose line is it anyway?'', then crossed the road in search of dinner at a ``Rip Griffins''. This had something of the air of a transport café, but I was able to have a perfectly reasonable dinner of steak and enchiladas for just over ten dollars. I returned to the motel to consider my plans for the next few days, and went to bed at 11.20.