The Great American Road Trip

Man, it was hard to get up this morning! My biggest secret fear going into this trip was that I was too old for this crap, and that my stamina just isn’t what it used to be. So far, so good, but my butt hurts from sitting, and my shoulders hurt from being tense. I’m really missing my wife Deborah right now! I might be losing my mind…

Today was all about science, and science fiction. From Gallup, we drove about 3 hours to somewhere between a little village called Magdalena, and a town called Socorro. What is it that brought us out to the desert plains in the middle of nowhere? Why, a giant array of radio telescopes! What in the world is that? I’m glad you asked. I’m not sure how to describe it. First of all, radio telescopes are like regular telescopes, except instead of images we can see with our naked eye, it detects images we can’t see – radio frequencies. Radio telescopes come in many different shapes and sizes. Here is one of the telescopes at the VLA (Very Large Array) that we visited:

Now take that radio telescope, make 20 more of them, and then place them in a Y-shape that stretches out 14 miles and connect them together – into an array. Using all 21 radio telescopes, connected together, you can create one giant array which can reach the vast distances of outer space! By listening to, and categorizing the different radio frequencies, you can determine what is a natural frequency, like a black hole or a pulsar, and what is who-knows-what-probably-aliens.

These telescopes are huge. They stand 94 feet tall. The VLA is (I believe) government owned, but scientists can schedule time with these telescopes to do research on various projects. Currently, the VLA is in the middle of “mapping” out the entire sky, or something like that. The people there were very friendly, and they tried to explain it as best they could, but I have to admit that I was just nodding my head a few times – without actually understanding what they were saying. Sorry!

You may have seen the VLA in movies or Television. The site has been seen in movies like “Contact” (based on a book by Carl Sagan – and one of my favorite movies), “Terminator” 3 or 4, or something (the one with Christian Bale), as well as some video by Bon Jovi which I didn’t recognize. All in all it was well worth the stop, and the boys enjoyed being there. It was all very interesting!

After visiting the VLA (the science portion of today), we drove another 3 hours or so south to Roswell, New Mexico, for what would be our science fiction portion of our day. In case you didn’t know, Roswell is known for several things: It’s the dairy capital of the Southwest! (saw it on a billboard entering town), it’s the location of the New Mexico Military Institute, and oh yeah, in 1947 an alien spaceship crash-landed somewhere outside of town and the U.S. military has been covering up the fact that they retrieved the spaceship and ONE OF ITS OCCUPANTS! This town has “The Hart Boys” written all over it!

It’s actually kind of funny how some parts of town pretend like nothing ever happened, and the other parts of town act like they actually, personally, have been probed, and liked it.

We ended our day visiting the “International UFO Museum and Research Center” in downtown Roswell. We knew it was some hokey tourist trap (we knew the actual aliens are being stored at Area 51), but we just couldn’t resist paying a few bucks to be entertained.

They had more signed sworn affidavits from witnesses than actual alien artifacts (again, Area 51 in Nevada). They had various recreations, including an alien autopsy. All in all, nobody in our group was convinced one way or the other, but it was a lot of fun to visit. Here is our evidence:

Some final thoughts about today:

• As I said, the movie “Contact” is one of my favorites. It’s about what happens when we make contact with aliens. It starred Jodie Foster, and for you ladies (and guys – you know who you are) there is a younger, more virile Matthew McConaughey. My favorite line from the movie: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” So Carl Sagan.
• Driving some pretty desolate country, and I’ve hardly seen any wildlife. Saw some antelope today. Saw some baby birds. Saw a lizard. That’s about it. Now, dead animals? Seen plenty of those. I’ve seen a dead raccoon, lots of dead deer, a dead bird, a dead porcupine, a couple of dead coyotes, and a dead cow. Yup, you read that right. A big, dead, black and white cow – legs up in the air – dead. Not sure what happened, but I doubt it died of natural causes.
• Oh yeah, almost forgot. On our way from the VLA to Roswell, we passed a couple of interesting places. We drove through the town of Capitan, where, according to Wikipedia: “In spring of 1950, a badly burned black bear cub was rescued from a large forest fire at Capitan Gap in the Capitan Mountains. First called Hotfoot Teddy, he was later renamed Smokey and became the real-life version of the United States Forest Service mascot Smokey Bear. Smokey was later sent to the National Zoo in Washington D.C., where he lived for 26 years. Upon his death on November 9, 1976,^[6] Smokey’s remains were returned by the government to Capitan and buried at what is now the Smokey Bear Historical Park.” We didn’t stop, but Smokey Bear effigies were all over town.
• Another interesting place we drove through (I wish I had more time – I would’ve stopped at this place) was the town of Lincoln. The so-called “most dangerous town” in the wild west days, Lincoln was the site of a famous incident involving Billy the Kid (William Bonney). Billy was arrested for murder, was tried, and convicted and sentenced to hang – all at the Lincoln Courthouse. But, in 1878, before he could be executed, Billy shot and killed a sheriff and his deputy, and escaped into the New Mexico desert. We stopped outside the courthouse but was told we could not park there, so we drove on.
• One last place we would’ve stopped at if we could was the Trinity Site. This was where the first atomic bomb was tested. It is a military installation now, and is only open to the public one day a year. Today was not the day. Supposedly, it’s only open one day because the place still has a reasonable amount of residual radiation, and so it is still not safe to linger. We did stop to take a picture of a sign just outside the facility:

Anyway, it’s late and we have a long day tomorrow. We’re driving through the panhandle of Texas (Amarillo), and ending up in Oklahoma City. Thanks for checking in with us. Wish you were here!