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.