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.