Finding “Smokey” while Hot on the Tarantula Trail!

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After a fun morning in Roswell, New Mexico we were back on the highway heading southwest towards Deming. What’s in Deming you ask? Not a whole lot, but we needed a place to crash before making the trek to Tucson where there’d be plenty. Today’s stretch was about three hours and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from previous road trips, it’s the importance of breaking up long drives with any interesting attractions we can find along the way. Unfortunately, those aren’t easy to come by in this mountainous region which is why we were very happy to discover something just an hour into the drive while also gaining new insights about America’s iconic messenger of forest fire prevention, Smokey Bear. Now for most of my life I’ve always referred to him as Smokey THE Bear but, after being admonished on numerous occasions by our friend April (whose father-in-law used to be the Director of New Hampshire’s Forest and Land), have since learned the error of my ways and no longer use the word “the” as Smokey’s middle name.

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Visiting the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell!

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The International UFO Museum and Research Center is appropriately nestled on Roswell, New Mexico’s Main Street. Back in 1947 when the famous “Incident” occurred, the building served as a movie theater while likely going on to show many of the science fiction films its city would one day inspire. The museum opened in 1991 and not only features information on the Roswell Incident but the history of UFO sightings and alleged encounters worldwide. After spending the earlier portion of the morning perusing the local gift shops while taking full advantage of any and all goofy photo-ops, we were now ready for a more serious approach.

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Welcome to Roswell!

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It was our fifth day on the road when we arrived in Roswell, New Mexico; the cosmic G-spot for all UFO enthusiasts as well as the inspiration for this entire trip in the first place. The three hour journey from Albuquerque was actually kinda bland as we’d leave picturesque mountains in favor of dull flatland. Fortunately we had decent conversation to help carry us through. We knew we’d finally reached our destination when we spotted a gas station (the first one we’d seen in about 75 miles) featuring a flying saucer on it. There were a few other not so subtle hints as well.

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Getting our kicks on Route 66 with Buzzsaw Sharks & a T-Rex named Stan!

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After our success at Aztec we headed down to Gallup, New Mexico and spent the night. The next morning we decided to skip the crappy, free hotel breakfast in favor of McDonald’s and a southwestern variant of their breakfast burrito with green chiles (I swear, everything down here had green chiles in it). We barely sipped our ice coffees before hopping on to I-40 towards Petrified Forest National Park. It was just over an hour from where we’d been staying but, as soon as we crossed the Arizona border, the clock gave us those sixty minutes right back courtesy of the Arizona Mountain Time Zone. In many ways it was like going back fifty years…

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Invading the UFO Watchtower in Hooper, Colorado!

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It was only our second day on the road when we’d hit our first snag of the trip. The original plan was for us to leave Colorado Springs that afternoon and arrive at a unique attraction in Hooper, Colorado sometime in the evening. Unfortunately, our GPS couldn’t find the listed address no matter how many different ways we tried entering it in. Making matters even worse, neither of our cell phones could get any service unless we were near a metropolitan area. So much for Google Maps! I dug into the glove compartment and retrieved an old school, paper one but, with our eyes crossing from fatigue and unsure where to even look, it wasn’t much help either.

We’d already completed a full day of activities including the Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, as well as the May Insect Museum. At this point we were understandably starting to lose steam and opted to just go straight to our hotel in Alamosa (three hours south) with the intention of resuming our search the next morning. Our hope was that the human element would prevail where technology fell short and that one of the locals could point us in the right direction. After all, in the sparsely populated San Luis Valley, surely someone will have heard of the UFO Watch Tower.

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A “Sign” of Bigfoot on Pike’s Peak!

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The seeds for this latest Terror Dave adventure were planted during last year’s road trip while driving through Tennessee. We’d just seen a UFO house near Chattanooga when I asked the other Dave what his thoughts were about us visiting Roswell, New Mexico. After all, why should we toil in residential neighborhoods when we could go straight to the UFO capital of the world? David readily agreed so, for the next fourteen months, we saved the necessary funds while I spent hours mulling over maps, perusing websites, and thumbing through books on the region in an effort to create the perfect itinerary. I also spoke with numerous friends who were familiar with the southwest and could give me some input on what they considered to be “must see” spots.

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After about ten revisions, the trip evolved from us starting with our usual drive from Chicago into our flying into Denver and renting a vehicle we’d use to cover 4,000 miles in two weeks while making our way through New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Though a pricier option, it would allow for more activities including The Grand Canyon and Rachel, Nevada a.k.a. the vicinity of Area 51.  It would also afford us time to see less grandiose attractions such as the subject of today’s post; the world’s only officially sanctioned “Bigfoot Crossing” sign.

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