The world capital of UFOs is Roswell where strange occurrences have been reported since the 1940s. It’s home of the International UFO Museum, UFO City, the annual UFO Festival, and the upcoming Alien Theme Park. Up and down Main Street are space-themed businesses: UFO & Alien Stuff, Alien Zone & Area 51, Not of this World Cafe, Alien Spacecraft, Landing Screen Printing, etc. The place is nuts for alien invasion. I asked the clerk at a gift shop what locals think of it all and she said “We don’t like being the UFO center of the universe but we do love what it does for business!”
I didn’t foresee today’s focus being on UFOs but it does reinforce a theme:
Southeastern New Mexico is gaga for space. I visited the International Space History Museum. I drove past the White Sands Missile Range. I went looking for the Spaceport. I drove up to Sunspot Solar Observatory. I passed by the Very Large Array and explored the X Prize Cup. The space list goes on and on. There’s a reason for this!
Dr. Robert Goddard, the father of modern rocketry, identified early on that “the ideal location for this work should combine year-around outdoor working conditions, few cloudy or hazy days, level terrain, low vegetation, and adequate transportation facilities.” In a nutshell, this is SE New Mexico.
His rocketry work in Roswell in the 1930s laid the foundation for the space industry to flourish in southeast New Mexico. And so it grew and diversified.
Changing topics so radically you’ll feel your head spin … I visited the grave of Smokey Bear. Yes there really was a Smokey Bear found as a tiny cub of five pounds clinging to a tree and severely burned from a forest fire. He became the living symbol of the fire prevention program of the U.S. which was established to preserve wood as a strategic resource during World War II. Who knew?! He lived his life in the National Zoo till his death in 1976.
Did you notice the snow on Smokey’s grave stone? At the Smokey Bear Museum I had a hard time finding where he lay because so much snow had fallen. Yesterday was sunny with a high of 58 degrees. Today it never got above 28 degrees and snowed relentlessly. Tomorrow will be sunny again and in the 40s. Crazy but it makes for interesting and challenging driving.
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