We left Texas today, but not before driving through the meat capitol of the world, Hereford TX. Scores of depressed cows watched our car streak past. We crossed into New Mexico and passed through Clovis. We stopped at the Blackwater Draw Museum, home to one of the biggest mammoth kill sites in North America. We examined mammoth bones, giant ground sloth remains, and studied Clovis spear points (from c. 13,000 years ago). During the ice age, megafauna stopped by this site for a bite to eat and a drink of water. Dire wolves, prehistoric camels, saber-toothed tigers and six-foot armadillos were among the patrons. As is typical for every roadside paleontological museum, one room sported two giant spears used in the filming of the Star Trek episode "The Galileo 7."

The terrain en route to Roswell NM was very uniform. Very very uniform. You are getting sleepy. Very sleepy. Clouds stretched lazily out into the hazy distance. You feel your eyelids growing heavier. Soft sagebrush dotted the uniform, flat unwavering terrain. Your limbs feel heavy. Your head dips forward a little.

Part of this stretch, however, was the Woody Guthrie Memorial Highway, a fave musician of mine, and soon we saw several pronghorn antelopes grazing in the sage and felt revived.

A sweltering 114 degrees greeted us in Roswell, or so a bank display read. We think it may have only been a mere 112 degrees, but it was like a wall of dry heat hitting us as we stepped out of the cool car.

Our first glimpse of Roswell was positively alien-free. Where were the UFO cafes? Where were the stores full of schwa alien kitch? Just as we started to lament, we spied an entire city block of lampposts with huge almond-shaped alien eyes. This block extended into the next and the next.

We parked and excitedly strolled the streets, reaching the International UFO Museum & Research Center. There we read up on the Roswell UFO crash of 1947. Hundreds of photographs, statements, and reconstruction of pieces of evidence, such as the thin metal pieces, "bakelite" style pieces, and the little "i-beam" piece found directly after the crash.

The gift shop was wonderfully kitchy, with alien doormats, magnets, pens, sculptures, t-shirts, and inflatable extraterrestrials. We exited again into the heat. At a little store across the street, we paid $1 to spin a large metal UFO and won three paratrooper aliens and a deck of alien mini-playing cards. Aliens adorned tops of buildings, and many structures sported UFOs that had crashed into their corners or walls. We flew the paratrooper aliens while still in Roswell, so they could join in on the alien crashing fun.

Another gorgeous sunset astounded us.









Next onto the bats at Carlsbad Caverns...