One Lap

Date: 11/13/2013

Day: 48

Location: Socorro, NM

Miles Today: 256

Total Miles: 11,483

Leaving Carlsbad; On the Road, Socorro, Tomorrow

Leaving Carlsbad

We did not give Carlsbad a fair shot last night. It was dark when we got back from the Caverns. It turns out that this is a nice little town with a lot of interesting things to look at. The Carlsbad high school team is ... wait for it... The Cavemen!

Steak Diane is (we looked it up) is pan-fried beefsteak with a sauce made from the seasoned pan juices, generally prepared in restaurants tableside, and flambéed. What a burrito Diana might be will remain a mystery.

This significantly long horned critter is outside a steak house.

Street scene in Carlsbad. Again, not a bad place in the middle of nowhere.

There is more significant public sculpture in America than one would expect. Some of it is little towns like Carlsbad.

They have ice vending stations in Carlsbad, of course, but they have water vending stations as well.

A dandy small own city hall.

On the road

New Mexico has a problem with DUI. The Colonel has been warned that they don't check skin color before asking you to blow in a tube. All for the best, of course.

One of the things they do in New Mexico is put a name and sometimes a face on the Don't Drink and Drive signs. Full marks for NM.

How many pictures of open road can this enterprise withstand? Probably not this many.

Lincoln County

The path from Carlsbad to Socorro passes through Roswell (of crashed UFO fame) and Lincoln county New Mexico. This is dry country but charming. This is Billy the Kid country with many markers commemorating his depredations.

The term "malpais," bad country, is used to describe land with a lava flow overburden.

These signs on the road indicate the turn off to White Sands and the Trinity Site. Another place where the world changed. These hills were once illuminated by light that did not come form the sun.

The Cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande have change color to a wonderful copper gold.

Roswell

Roswell is another place far out of the usual way, but interesting when you get there. You will recall the famous Roswell Incident in which a UFO is said to have crashed in nearby range land on July 4, 1947. The recovered bits and pieces, including alien entities (dead of alive, depending on the story) were spirited off by government agents to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton. The cognoscenti will even tell you the number of the hanger where the material was taken.

Roswell has some fun with this story, like they do with Rip van Winkle in the Catskills. If you look closely, you will see that the guy with the pick up truck is offering a jump start and the lady is offering a pie.

And, inevitably, there is the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

It is easy to view this place as a sideshow attraction. It is more than that. It seems most likely that these are believers trying very hard to be fair with the evidence. Since there is no tangible evidence of alien visitation, there are carefully documented reports on who said what and when they said it in regard to the famous Roswell incident.

There are many dioramas.

This is Kenneth Arnold, the guy who saw the Lubboc Lights from his aircraft in 1947 which started the seeing UFO craze. There are lots of displays like this, similar to a high school science fair.

This is the narrative description of the first sighting of the evidence of the incident.

These grey guys are about 3 feet tall.

Since there is no evidence, there are illustrations.

The oval eyed alien logo is all over town.

Socorro

It is very likely that you have never been to or heard of Socorro New Mexico. It is about an hous south of Albuquerque on I-25. Founded in the 16th century, it was the biggest city in the state by the 1880s. It is the Home of New Mexico Tech, where the Colonels nephew goes to school and also home of the Colonels dear brother and Sister-in-law.

According to the locals, the area around Socorro was not included in the original Spanish land survey, not recorded properly on the Mexican maps and therefore not part of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And therefore not really a part of the United States. Of course, they issue a passport.

The Garcia Opera House, Socorro

The Garcia Opera House was built in the 1880's and is still in use. It probably seats about 500 people. The adobe walls are held up by tie rods; one wall has at least a 20 degree lean from the vertical. Proscenium Arch, great acoustics, raked stage. It was the Colonel's extreme good fortune to watch a dress rehearsal of The Lion in Winter this evening in which all his relatives paricipated. It is a strange experience to see, for the first time, an acting company giving its all for an audience of 4. Hooray for little theater!