The journey was like no other, taking us across wide scorching deserts, up and over entire mountain ranges, among forests of fir trees and galloping deer, through military missile testing facilities, past abandoned houses, ghost towns and their rusting relics of another time. We ran into border patrol check points, rolled past brilliant white dunes of sand, glistening like snow drifts in the middle of the bare desert, and followed the solid white line of a highway so long and straight that it tapered down to nothing but a motionless scratch on the horizon ahead. With the front tyre kissing this infinite line, we rumbled across the cracked, sun beaten tarmac for a hundred miles or more, as straight as an arrow, rising and falling gently with the rolling of the earth below. After two days on the road, we arrived at the home of the world's greatest UFO conspiracy theory...Roswell.
We visited the towns two main "Alien Museums". The first, a rather light-hearted affair, was a kind of, childhood class project that went too far. Behind the racks of badly printed t-shirts and souvenir mugs that form the front half of "Alien Zone", push through a small creaky doorway and enter the owner's crazy little alien world, with various dioramas for visitors to jump into and have their photo taken. Aliens watching TV, aliens having a barbecue, aliens serving beers - it made no sense but was a great way to end a long drive, along with being a genuine slice of modern day Americana.
The second stop on our short tour, and slightly more serious and educational than the first, The International UFO Museum & Research Centre, focuses on the events surrounding the supposed UFO crash landing in 1947. In short, something crashed into the desert, many first hand witnesses described it as a saucer shaped object and the military immediately issued a press release stating that a UFO had been found. Shortly after, another release from the same source said that in actual fact, it was debris from a weather balloon rather than anything extra terrestrial Many witness testimonies, (including those from ex-military officials directly involved who have, in recent years, been divulging 'the truth' to their families), support the claim that an alien craft, along with the actual alien beings inside, were recovered and taken to the top secret Nevada Air Force base "Area 51". There also appears to be a whole raft of evidence showing the government's (often extreme) efforts to silence these witnesses or nullify their testimonies with justifications and rather more down to earth reasonings. Taken as a whole, regardless of your opinions on the whole "aliens" thing, what the museum puts forward is, at the very least, extremely interesting. If you want to read more, the Wikipedia page is a good start. Click HERE.
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| A slightly more "realistic" diorama |
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