Roswell: June 28 "The Truth is Out There. In Roswell."

When we were leaving Carlsbad, we decided we had two very different options. Either head through White Sands area and then through Arizona (Tuscon & Phoenix before Grand Canyon and Sedona) OR head through Roswell to see Santa Fe & Albuquerque - more of New Mexico and less Arizona. I was thinking the UFO Museum in Roswell may be more entertaining than the white sands, so we ended up turning this way instead of that.

As we entered the town of Roswell this was the view:

 Before getting into the downtown strip, we didn't see any of the alien paraphernalia we were hoping for. Just a dusty desert town.

We only arrived with 15 minutes to spare before closing time, although KG was assured it would be "more than enough". The ticket salesmen even gave us 2-4-1. Which was much appreciated.

We ran through and snapped these shots just in time to leave as the closing announcement came on. It. Is. Quite. A. "Museum". Museum AND international research center, so the signs say.

There is a fancy display in the middle of the room -- the UFOs actually spin and play eerie whistle-y music and flash different colors every 5 minutes or so.

The museum is like a warehouse room with cubicle walls around the edges.... on which seem to be tacked art and essay projects from the 4-H fair, 5-12 year old division. Then there are some more fake dead alien bodies thrown in for good measure. These are what aliens look like. Based on international research, the movies were right!

After skimming through the printed out copies of picture proof of UFOs and letters from abductees, as I was about to exit the room I was glad I didn't miss the final display wall - it contained further International UFO Reasearch: X-Files posters. I knew watching that show as our weekly treat through childhood was important.

We decided to take a stroll through their downtown strip. Not having seen as much kitch alien-ness on the drive into town as we expected, we assumed this strip at least would not be lacking in alien kitch-ness. We were right.

They're playing cards.

 The Pleidians are like.. a 3 piece alien Beatles. Right?

Besides all the alien invasion inspired visuals, we also took in an extraordinarily large moth/butterfly and an other-worldly building in the distance.

 An interesting (and admittedly, to my perception a tad on the creepy side) little town in the dusty corner of America's history. After our hour long entertaining pit stop, it was time to keep rolling west.

Yet, as we drove down the strip back towards the wild open spaces... we had the A/C on (well over a hundred degrees still and feelin' it) and I began to smell some nasty fumes comin' out. K told me I was simply paranoid, an over protective worrisome mother of this powerful beast of a Scuttlebuss. I said, hey now. This smells bad. I know this puppy. Let's pull her over and take a look. K transitioned from: "It smells fine." to: "I don't think that's our van." to: "It'll go away." to: "It's probably fine...  but if you really think we should pull over...." Yes. I do. Here, at this Autozone. Maybe ask a couple of precautionary questions to these automobile type folk (which we are not).
We pull in and pop the hood. We hear bubbling... our engine coolant is close to empty and doing the boiling dance of the overheated. We had noticed when driving through 110 degrees out of Texas and into New Mexico that the engine temperature did climb a bit, which seemed only reasonable. Now, we know nothing of boiling coolants and felt somewhat nervous the whole thing could explode or some such disaster. So we go into AutoZone to find an employee who may be of some use.
What we instead found was a condescending creepy employee who kept telling us what we later found out to be incorrect information and calling us "Dude" and "Ese" every few words. He told us we could need a new thermostat. He told us we could need a new water pump. He told us to put in undiluted coolant, even though it says on the van to only ever use 50/50. We didn't listen to him. We bought the 50/50, called a few more car savvy folk and thought about our next move. We should have learned from previous experience: an Autozone worker in Tenessee told us to ignore the pressure our tire told us it should be, since we have a heavy load and they looked low he told us to fill them up to 50 (instead of the 35 it reads on the tires). We did, and then our tire exploded from over inflation on the way to Florida. AutoZone employees are not mechanics.

Mechanics were now closed (it was after 6) and we considered staying in Roswell to have it looked at the next morning. And yet, this place (and this Dude) was skeezing us out a bit... we felt that if we drove no faster than 70 and didn't run the A/C (since that's where the smell was coming from), we could get to our next location. It would be either Albuquerque or Santa Fe, both options would be bigger places with less of a chance to be scammed by scary alien town residents. (No offence to any Rosewell-iens that may be reading.)

We planned to head to Albuquerque potentially skipping Santa Fe. Then en route we realized it was exactly the same amount of driving to either location so we decided to check out Santa Fe first and get our Scuttlebuss looked at there. The van made it just fine... little did she (or we) know she'd need to be relied on to drive us away from strange situations out of Santa Fe soon enough.... adventure awaited us, little did we know what kind.