Day 2 - Roswell Tour and the International UFO Museum

Note; If you're unfamiliar with the Roswell incident I highly recommend a book called The Ultimate Guide to the Roswell Crash. Another excellent book is The Roswell Legacy by Jessie Marcel Jr. 

Today started at 9:00 AM, kicking off a 2-hour tour with Dennis Balthaser. I've heard Dennis on several paranormal podcasts and radio shows, including The Paracast and Jim Harold's Paranormal Podcast. I've always enjoyed his visits and information and found Dennis to be a critical thinker and reasonable in his assumptions and conclusions.

Jessie Marcel's Residence in 1947

Walter Haut's Residence in 1947

The Roswell Daily Record

The tour took us around Roswell, visiting locations important to the 1947 incident. Thankfully I'd done a bit of homework about the incident and was able to ask moderately intelligent questions which Dennis answered willfully and openly. He was a fantastic host, not afraid to say astounding comments like, "I'm not sure," or just admit there could be alternate explanations to what happened in Roswell in 1947. I found his lack of ego and openness to discuss the things he'd researched as well as suspicions about alternative explanations refreshing.

The Chaves County Courthouse where the Roswell sheriff's office used to  sit.

Speaking of egos, while standing in front of Hanger 84 where it's reported the alien bodies and saucer wreckage were held by the Army Air Force in 1947, I asked Dennis why his tour didn't take us to the International UFO Museum. "I'm banned," he said with a crooked little smile. "Banned?!" I replied looking at him. He went on to explain that he had a 'falling out' with the curator of the museum, the daughter of Walter Haut, the Army Air Force officer who issued the press release of the crashed saucer being in the Army's possession back in 1947. According to Dennis, Haut's daughter really does not like being told she's wrong, nor does she like having people smarter or more knowledgeable around her. This not only created stress between her and Balthaser, but between her and the Roswell town hall, and it may be the reason why Roswell itself is shying away more and more from it's UFO roots. More on that later.

Hanger 84

After the tour with Dennis, which again was excellent and well worth the price, Van and I indeed headed to the International UFO museum. There we toured about and encountered far more information then I expected about UFO's and the entire Roswell incident. After about an hour I was seriously experiencing information overload. A bit of disappointment came in the form of the fact that the actual radio broadcast announced by the local Roswell radio station about the 1947 incident, was broken down. The museum employees had the broadcast piped through a vintage-looking radio, at least they did when it worked. Van asked if the museum had copies of the broadcast for sale, perhaps on DVD, and was directed to the Research Center of the building.

Another shot of Hanger 84

Here I was seriously impressed. The Research Center was very large and extensive, with video rooms, DVD's, microfiche, and more. It looked like the Center was going to be a hub of UFO and alien information but I wondered how accessible this information was to UFO researchers when the gate-keeper was such an arrogant individual. Of course I had no confirmation of the curator's actual personality, I never met the woman. And Van had an encounter of his own, in the Research Center. It seems that despite the extensiveness of the Center they didn't have a walkman or any other type of audio device that could play the CD-copy of the Roswell radio broadcast. Jenius. All that technology and you can't play a simple audio file. After another hour of perusing the content, from interesting and intelligent to cheesy and awesomely pop-culture-ish, we spend some bucks at the gift shop then headed back out.

Click here for my Picasa UFO Museum Pics!

A fantastic bar, reported to be over 100 years old.

Our next stop was the Roswell Winery, a hipster-like hang out with a 100+ year old bar that had some history of it's own. By the end of the night I was ready to crash like an alien saucer in the desert. I was fighting a cold and it was wearing me down but Roswell, the tour, and the museum did not let me down. My conclusions about Roswell? I don't believe we'll ever really know what happened there in the New Mexico desert in very early July 1947 but it's interesting to speculate and divulge in the culture of the event. If you're a UFO enthusiast, Roswell, regardless of what you think really happened, should be on your bucket list.

Supposedly these are Billy the Kid's spur-marks on the bar. Hrm.

Day 1 - Travel Day to Roswell

Greetings fellow UFO buffs! We've traveled to Roswell, New Mexico, found our hotel, and are now currently settled in. My friend, Van, and I took the rather boring route of SR 40 to 285, which we were told later was a mistake due to how long and boring it is. One of the best stops we made was at a small truck stop (proclaimed as world famous though neither Van nor I had heard of it.) There we found quite a bit of New Mexico merchandise and several bit of UFO/Alien merchandise as well.
We moved on down 285 and came across a small ruin that compelled me to stop and take some pictures, then we moved on to Roswell. After settling into our hotel, getting some lunch, and stopping by the visitor's center where we met a very knowledgable employee, we moved on to some very cheesy, and humorously pop-culturish, UFO stores.
It's pretty clear that Roswell is thick in the UFO lore, after seeing proclamations of "Aliens Welcome" and statues of typical grays or green-skinned aliens on banks, restaurants, and grocery stores. I've been told that Roswell is 100% dependent on it's UFO connection and without that connection this desert town would fail. After being in Roswell for a few hours I beg to differ. Roswell is not a sleepy little desert town, nor is it solely dependent on some UFO connection, link, or convention. There's still a strong military presence (the Military Academy), rich New Mexico art, some manufacturing (wine and some other products) and Roswell even has it's own water input, environmentally different from the rest of New Mexico. This gives the town a seriously strong advantage, even if you take out all the UFO phenomenon surrounding the community. In barren New Mexico desert, Roswell thrives.
Unfortunately I'm not able to display some of the very awesome pictures I took, today, due to a very slow Internet connection and ISP signal in our hotel, but I plan on playing catch up tomorrow night. As far as tomorrow, at 9:00 am we have a Roswell tour with none other than Dennis Balthaser which I'm very much looking forward to. More later....stay safe.
Try this.
Jeff.

My 2012 UFO Trip!

Greetings and Salutations!

In April of this year (2012) I took a tour of the American Southwest that highlighted some of the well-known UFO hotspots in New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. The tour was conducted by AlpVentures under the guise of www.topsecrettours.com and was put on by the founder of AlpVentures, Tony Cisneros. From April 10th until April 21st, a good friend of mine named Van, and I traveled the Southwest visiting places like Roswell, Meteor Crater, Kingman, and Area 51 just to name a few places. Within the posts of this blog you will find detailed information, some photographs, and my personal opinions on some of the places, people, and stories we heard throughout the tour.

To start I would like to make some comments about the tour itself. For someone like me this tour was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, especially for the price. Even if I were to utilize the full power of the Internet and organize this type of trip outside of topsecrettours.com I highly doubt I would be able to muster the locations, hotel accommodations, airline tickets, tour-speakers, and inside information garnered and arranged by Tony.

The tour was specifically designed to bolster and educate people about UFO incidents in the Southwest...not something my wife was interested in at all which is why Van, not my wife, accompanied me on my trip (it was FAR cheaper for 2 to go than 1). My wife, though she is into the paranormal and honestly believes in UFO's and ET visitation, as well as the possibility of multi-universe-based visitation, does not have the time to research the subject, and she hates the American Southwest. She disapproves of things like...dirt and big "holes" in the ground as she describes the Grand Canyon so she stayed at home and graciously allowed me to pursue my dream of UFO research.

A little bit about the tour itself; Tony had originally organized the tour for a whole month but the cost and time involved proved too restrictive for people interested in going, so he split the tour into two parts. Part one took place over my kids' spring break and Easter, two reasons why I couldn't go on that leg of the tour. This did upset me since the first leg included special guest Stanton Friedman, famed UFO researcher and nuclear scientist, and a stop at Roswell, NM. What, I ask you, is a UFO tour without a stop in Roswell?? It's nothing I say! which is why Van and I worked with Tony to fly out a few day's early (destination; Albuquerque), rent a car, and drive to Roswell before the official second leg of the tour started.

Having arranged a 2-week vacation with my work, then, I flew out to Albuquerque, NM on April 10th to begin my adventure, meeting Van at the airport as he had flown out from Orlando, FL where he had been visiting his parents the week before. The following posts are what we experienced from the places, the people, and the things we saw. During my descriptions I'll no-doubt get a bit irritated at some things, a bit silly at others, but the purpose of this blog is to state my experiences, my thoughts, and all things encountered along this adventure. I apologize ahead of time for any rough language and subject matter.

Enjoy.

Jeff.