UFO sightings in Roswell, and Even Stranger Sights in Nature

Yesterday we made a trip through the flatlands of Texas to Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell doesn't have much to recommend itself. In fact, the whole area is pretty flat and a little forlorn. But in 1947 something either did or didn't happen there, which has given this town its very reason for being. It's not enough that there is a UFO museum. There are UFO references everywhere.

In fact, if a flying saucer didn't seem to have landed there once, it's hard to picture what this town would have going for it. It is  like a lot of towns at the intersection of two highways in the middle of some place. You have to go through there, and maybe you have to eat, and walk around too. Maybe, depending on where you have come from, you even have to sleep there. So, to keep a town going, they have to make people like you  pick their little corner,  as opposed to another one.

What Roswell has going for it is this big "controversy" about whether aliens landed there, and whether some people have been abducted by aliens and then returned to earth....and whether or not the US government has covered it all up. It's all a little bit more cheesy than scary, but it makes a good stop in the middle of a long road trip. For your enjoyment and edification, here are some images from the town.

This is what it looks like before you get there 

Window in a Mexican restaurant. I'm sure it's meant to make you want to eat there.

Bob with aliens

There are many kinds of  evidence of what REALLY happened

From Roswell we traveled to Alamogordo New Mexico, which is just outside White Sands National Monument, which just might be the coolest place on earth. Yes of course, this is the area of the  missile range, and the Trinity site where the nuclear bomb was "practiced," and I'm sure a lot of secretive and horrible stuff happened around here. But there is not a lot of that stuff for tourists to see,  and anyway, we came here to see one of the most amazing natural places on earth, the White Sands National Monument. I'm sure all that secretive stuff happened here because this place is seriously remote. It's pretty far from everywhere, and you can't even see most of it because it's government
land.  But what you can see is pretty damned amazing.

The mountains around here have a lot of gypsum in them. This is the stuff sheetrock and drywall are made of. Through a long and elaborate process that takes a very long time, but is very cool, the waters from rains that occur in something of a monsoon season here wash some gypsum crystals from the mountains, across the land, into some pools of water. There used to be big lakes here, but now the water dries up and leaves the crystals behind. Then the wind, which blows with some remarkable force and energy, blows the crystals across the land. They break up into tiny little grains which are finer, and much whiter, than the kinds of quartz crystals that we think of when we think of sand. Because there are these big mountains here, there is no place for this gypsum sand to go, so it just piles up in these amazing dunes. These amazing white sand fields and dunes just go on for miles and miles. Okay, this isn't very good geology, but you get what I mean.

White sand, blue sky 

It's impossible to show a sense of scale

Footprints. They won't be there long

It looks a lot like snow, in a very weird way. The roads at the National Monument are mostly hard packed sand, and not paved, because the sand keeps shifting and the road has to keep moving. There are areas along the road where the sand is piled up by plows and looks just like snow.  But this is one hot place for much of the year, and I am SO grateful we were here in March. I just can't imagine what it would be like to be here in summer. Even now, the whiteness is just blinding. This is the only spectacular natural place, besides the sea, that I have ever had the feeling that whatever I do doesn't matter, because soon it will be erased. I just love that feeling of being so small and inconsequential. It is why I love the ocean most of all. It is, well...BIG. And here is just a land in motion, like the sea is in motion, although this is much more quiet and subtle....and a tiny bit confusing. I fear for people who decide to backpack in there. Everything looks so much like everything else.

In addition to amazing dunes, that you can walk on, and over, for as far as your eye can see, they have created little places where you can pull over in your car and just stop and look at it. And there are picnic places which shelter you from the intense sun and the shifting sand. I think the picnic areas have to be portable, because the sand will keep moving. The picnic shelters look weirdly like sailboats, or like shells.  In addition to walking, there are areas where you can go sledding down the dunes. The Park Service doesn't discourage you, since whatever you do will be gone soon enough.

I love these funny shapes. They are quite functional, too.

This place is something really special. It's not possible to take a decent picture of it with my phone. The BIGNESS and the whiteness just doesn't come through.  You'll have to take my word for it. But the incredible whiteness of the sand, and the blueness of. the sky, is a sight I will never forget.