Day 2 - The VLA & Travis Walton

The second day of the tour brought us to the Jansky Very Large Array radio telescope site. I have one word about this stop; fucking windy! I've experienced near-tornado winds and hurricane winds but nothing like this. The VLA spreads across the New Mexico desert in a massive expanse and since it's so barren and remote there's nothing to stop the wind. The structure of the VLA Visitors center was trembling and shaking as if an earthquake was occurring, and there were permanent signs up warning about the wind, which told me that the wind was a constant issue.

Yeah...fucking windy!! (Photo courtesy of TopSecret Tours)

Click here for photo's of the array and Travis Walton taken by Top Secret Tours.
Click here for my own photos of the day.

If you're unfamiliar with the array (or didn't click my link above), the VLA is a spread of 27 (+1 on hold or being maintenanced) massive radio dishes that each weigh upwards of 230 tons. (I don't think that the dishes weigh this much because of the technology in them or their massive size. I think the builders of the dishes weighed them down so they wouldn't freakin' blow away!) The dishes work in unison with one another, forming a single, massive telescope that operates within radio wave frequencies, picking up objects in space unseen by the human eye. Despite popular belief, and the movie Contact, the VLA is not used for the SETI Project, however it's widely accepted that if indeed the SETI Project detected an abnormal radio transmission from space, the VLA would be called upon to confirm it. There was no real UFO connection at this stop other than, perhaps, the potential link to SETI, but it was still a fascinating stop with links to astronomy and space itself. Without the wind, the VLA would have rated very high on my list for stops that we did on this tour.

The rest of the day was spent driving to Heber, AZ. We stopped off at a quaint little dinner on the way there, and it started snowing pretty bad. We're talking near-white out conditions. Not too pleasant for someone who was fighting a pretty hard cold and had been looking for some desert heat on this trip. We also stopped by the grave site of a guy by the name of William, or Billy, Cooper. I'd never heard of Bill Cooper but Tony had and told us the story of how Cooper, a former military man, had become a big-time conspiracy theorist, speaking out against the government, UFO's, and secret experiments. Cooper was shot dead during a confrontation with the local law enforcement in the early 2000's and some believe that the shooting had been planned....as in an execution. Even Cooper's death, it seemed, was steeped in suspicion!

Once in Heber we got some dinner then headed back to our hotel for a presentation by famed abductee, Travis Walton. I'd heard mixed stories about Travis and his claims of alien abduction back in 1975 but he was a massive draw for Linda and Katie both.  Linda even brought her copy of Fire in the Sky for him to sign. Tony had advised us that Travis had been extremely hesitant to give the presentation and only agreed to it after talking to Tony on the phone several times, establishing a trust-base, first. I'd imagine that after 35+ years of skeptics, disbelievers, and hecklers, Travis was pretty sick of it and wanted to avoid such people.

Coming into the small meeting room at the hotel I got the impression Travis was hesitant even then. As we filed in he looked around and I tried to make eye contact, perhaps to let him know we weren't there to cut down his story. It was about that time I realized I was walking on egg shells and resolved myself not to be quite so timid around the guy. Maybe that's where I went wrong, LOL.

The presentation was good. Travis seemed off-center a few times but then again he's not a professional at doing this. He came across as a normal, approachable man doing little more than explaining his experience. At the end of the presentation we were able to ask a few questions and I had one. I raised my hand and started to ask, "You've been to several UFO conferences and seminars and, no doubt, heard a lot of other experiences from contactees and abductees. Of any of those other stories, if you've found them to be credible, have you talked to those other abductees and compared notes? If so, have you been able to find similarities between your mutual experiences and shared similarities in the beings, their craft, and how they treated you as human beings?" The nature of my question was to see if any comparison had been done within the abductee field by those abductee's themselves, and Walton may well be the best person to perform that comparison.

Unfortunately I didn't get an answer to my question.

I got about a third of the way through my question, about to here, "...if you've found them to be credible..." when Travis interrupted me pretty abruptly. "Well it's not my place to judge if another story or person's experience is credible or not so I don't really talk to other abductees or contactees." During his reply Walton didn't look my way at all, instead he looked at the person in front and to the left of me.


Um...okay. I guess in a way that WAS an answer to my question but I found it odd that he didn't even let me finish asking it. From there the next question was asked and then we went into a book-selling/autograph and photograph session. After that the plan was for Travis to escort us out to the place where he was dropped off by a UFO craft, or where he came to, on a street just outside Heber. From there he walked into Heber to a phone booth to call his brother to come and pick him up. Unfortunately I was still fighting a cold and was pretty tired so, for the first and only time, during the tour I was not going to participate in the activities. I let Tony know I was going to bow out of the drive up the street, but did walk out to the van with the rest of the crew. On the way out I held the door for Travis, who was walking behind me, and as he passed me I said, "Hey Travis, that was a great presentation, very interesting. I enjoyed it very much." Travis walked by without so much as a sideways glance my way. I know he had to have heard be because Bonnie, who was following him, said, "Yes, it was a great presentation, Travis, thank you." I got no so much as a word of acknowledgement from Walton.

Oh well. Sometimes you just come across wrong to other people, I suppose, and me more than others. Never did I mean to be short or abrasive toward Walton. The short-tale of it is that I sort of believe his account. I mean he has five other people backing him up, and there are other aspects of his story, and Walton himself, that tells me he's telling the truth about what happened to him in 1975. I headed back to my hotel and crashed, strong, until the next morning.

Day 3 - or Day 1 of the Actual Tour - Petroglyph Monument and Socorro New Mexico

This day started with a slightly-hurried car right back to Albuquerque to meet up with Tony (tour guide) and the rest of the tour group. We connected at the Albuquerque airport and met the rest of Team UFO, as I started calling us. I was a bit leery, at first, once it became apparent that Van and I were the youngest in the group. The cast of our group is as follows:

• Linda - former travel agent, traveling alone since her family and husband weren't into the UFO stuff.
• Katie - UFO buff and psychic/medium who won her spot on the tour at a UFO convention.
• Terry - an older gentleman who's been on 23 of Tony's different kind of tours, including, mostly, Tony's WWII tours in Europe.
• Bonnie - A vegan, pagan, hippie chick, and all-around great person. Of all the people on the tour, Bonnie was the only one in better shape than I, and I had a hard time keeping up with her, sometimes.
• Glen and Ellen - a married couple who enjoyed taking trips and adventures around the U.S. and beyond.
• Then there was Van and I to round it out.

If there was any major downer about the trip it was the van. The count was 9 people in a van built for 12. On the outset that sounds great except for the fact that you had our luggage as well and the van only had one set of doors to exit and enter through. It was a passenger van so if someone in the back wanted out for any reason, everybody in between him and those doors had to move. Also there were several times Tony would turn around and talk to us from the driver seat, giving us instruction or information about our next stop and it was very hard to hear Tony from the back, where Van and I sat. The van sucked. End of complaint.

Click here for my Picasa album of pictures taken on this part of the trip!

Once we were on the road our first stop was the Petroglyph National Monument. The UFO connection, here was the fact that of the 100 or so petroglyphs on the trail we took in Boca Negra Canyon, some of the glyphs appear alien or craft-type in design. Some of the images included saucer type images as well, and what's implied is that the ancient American Indians who crafted these glyphs were in contact with an alien species, and were documenting their craft. True or not the concept is very intriguing, and it's a well-known fact that ancient American Indians did document their environment, and what they saw and experienced within the area via these types of glyphs and artwork. If it just so happened that these indigenous peoples encountered these beings it would stand to reason they would document it anyway they could. Unfortunately this part of the tour was a bit disorganized. We all split up and sort of went our separate ways. I saw some glyphs that could have been interpreted as being alien beings, or of saucer-type vehicles, but I think it would have been better if we would have been directed to some of the more compelling images. Then, we cut out of the Monument a bit too quickly for my liking. There were at least two paths along the park from where we were at but before we had even had the chance to get down the first path Tony was ushering us away. 

The Visitors Center at the Petroglyph National Monument

After a quick lunch we were on the road heading to downtown Socorro. Here we stopped at a small park surrounded by quaint little shops and bordered by an official town building. Across the street sat a piece of the housing from the atomic bomb which was first tested not too far from Socorro there in the New Mexico desert at the Trinity site. See my Picasa picture link for some pictures of Jumbo, what the housing was called.

At the small park Tony had us get out of the van and walk to some seats where he started a presentation about the modern study of UFO's starting with the Kenneth Arnold sighting and moving through Roswell. I was a little bored, here. I mean I'd just spent 2 days perusing this exact same material, not to mention I'd read several books and listened to ump-teen podcasts about this same line of history.

Still it was a good presentation and necessary for all the rest of the tour members, it just wasn't my thing. Instead I got distracted and noticed some police activity around a near-by gazebo in the park. It seemed the local drunk and two or three of his hoochie mama's (ugly women, one of whom had a baby carriage), who had eyed our van and small group with a look of disdain, were being questioned by a member of the local law. The next thing I know the police officer has the drunk by the scruff of the neck and is hauling him towards the police car. After tossing the drunk into the back of his car and a few more words exchanged with the hoochies, the officer loaded up the drunk's bike into the trunk of the squad car and headed away from the park, leaving the hoochies wondering where they're going to get their next hit of pot, I suppose. Awesome.

From there we loaded up and rode through Socorro where, in 1964, police officer Lonnie Zamora (a relative of the cop we just saw, perhaps??) saw a flashing, flickering light over an arroyo while chasing a speeding vehicle. I won't bore you with the details but we actually drove up to the point where Zamora saw an egg-shaped craft and two small beings, a scene he originally mistook for a turned-over car and two children wandering around the wreckage. As Zamora drove closer he briefly lost sight of the beings (down a small hill and back up on top of another arroyo), and when he stopped and got of his car the craft lifted up and darted off.

Team UFO at the Socorro Crash Site.

We saw four divots marked by stone, supposedly the landing points the egg-shaped craft, and a blackened bush. This part of the tour was fascinating to me and I soaked it up. To see the area and and the perspective of this sighting was pretty exciting to me. I asked if the bush had been chemically tested (Tony wasn't sure) because I was doubtful that after forty years the bush was still displaying such apparent markings from the take off but since no additional testing had taken place all I could do is remain doubtful. Tony talked about some skeptics, like Phil Klass, who shot down the Socorro event. Originally Tony stated that Phil had not even come to Socorro to investigate the sighting but a bit more research on my part found this not to be the case. Klass did go to Socorro in '64 but he was more interested in why Zamora would have hoaxed the sighting instead of the details of the sighting itself. Klass's skepticism was founded in the intention behind the sighting instead of the details of the sighting. As nuclear scientist Stanton Friedman is want to say, "If you can't attack the data, attack the people. It's easier." Klass had to resort to attacking Zamora's character and supposedly guilty intentions. It was pathetic if you asked me, but that's how that man operated.

When we were done investigating the site we headed to a restaurant and the hotel, booking down until around 8:15 the next morning.