UFO's and bats

I don't remember having heard of Roswell, New Mexico (but then there are a lot of things I don't remember and haven't heard of), but that doesn't mean that Roswell isn't famous. Just outside of Roswell in 1947, a flying saucer is reputed to have crashed and three bodies of small humanoid figures to have been recovered. The event was immediately hushed up by military authorities, but in the meantime, there have been a number of people peripherally connected to the event who have either testified to having seen physical evidence of the crash or to having had some connection to the coverup.

In the meantime Roswell has become the center for research into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) sightings around the world, and we visited the museum which is part of this center.
  

Milt at UFO Museum, Roswell, NM 

In addition to displays related to the testimony of various people connected to the event in 1947, we also viewed a very professionally done docudrama which interspersed interviews with people connected to the event in 1947, with dramatizations of possible key elements of the event. It was a very stimulating morning and certainly left one with the feeling that we may, indeed, have been visited by beings from a more advanced civilization in outer space.

From Roswell, we continued our way south to Carlsbad Caverns and took a cabin in a campground just south of the town of Carlsbad. For $40.00, the cabin included not only the usual appurtenances but also a microwave, a refrigerator, and a TV/DVD player with the privilege of choosing one free DVD to watch.

We arrived at this campground in time to settle in, relax and read for a bit on the front porch of our cabin, and then take off for Carlsbad Caverns.

We arrived at the amphitheater in front of the cave entrance at 6:00, just in time to see 500,000 bats (the number is not a misprint) emerge from the cave in waves and then spiral off into the distance in search of their evening meals of moths and other insects within a 30-40 mile radius. It's hard to believe that there would be enough insects even within a 30-40 mile radius to feed half a million bats, some of whom consume up to half their weight in insects every night, but apparently there are. We watched swarm after swarm of bats emerge from the mouth of the cave for over half an hour. The number then slowed down with pauses of several minutes between groups of bats heading off to the southeast, where there was water and consequently more insects. We left shortly after that, but the ranger told us that the exodus of bats often lasts for as long as two hours. A couple hours before sunrise the bats return to hang upside down in one room of the cave during the day until the next evening. In November, the bats begin a flight to Mexico where they winter before returning to Carlsbad in the spring. This flight of the bats was one of the most amazing sights I have ever seen!

Balloon Fiesta and cable car ride

 

balloon fiesta, Albuquerque, NM

 There are many advantages to traveling with Elise including the fact that she is constantly finding more places to go and things to see that I might have missed on my own, but one thing that has always irked me is her extended negotiations with room clerks at motels to get the highest room with the best view furthest from the road. These are just things that don't matter to me. Clean sheets? Running water? Maybe, but not necessarily, a microwave and refrigerator?  Good enough. I'm satisfied. I don't need to check out three different motels and wait out these negotiations. I have to admit, however, that this time it was worth her efforts. After checking out three different rooms, she finally settled on a room on the third floor with a view of the Balloon Fiesta, and although yesterday there wasn't much to see, today there was. We also broke out the binoculars, which I have carried all the way from Philadelphia and not yet used.

 Between our location and the binoculars we had a wonderful view of at least 50 brightly colored hot air or helium balloons that ascended within close view of us. We could see the balloons in full living color and some of them came close enough to us so that with the binoculars we could actually see the people in the baskets below the balloons. The highlight was one red balloon shaped like a huge heart with the word Skyheart written on it. We had never seen anything like this scene, and it was really an excitement, as one balloon after another came within view.

After the balloons had all drifted away, we drove to a peak of the Sandia Mountains slightly to the east of Albuquerque and took a cable car ride to the top, over 10,000 feet high. We had a great view of the mountain looming before us on one side and Albuquerque spread out below us on the other. We walked around a little while at the top and observed the ski slopes which are covered with about nine feet of snow during the winter. I also saw more of the trees with beautiful yellow leaves and found out that they were aspens and not beech or birch as I had previously thought.

 There was a bit of a mystery connected with our tickets for the cable car ride. Although Elise purchased the tickets with her credit card, the tickets came printed "10-07-10/senior/Milt. How did they even know my name? We couldn't figure it out until someone explained to us that Milt was short for military rather than Milton. Apparently, the senior discount and the military discount were the same so both were printed on the ticket. It was comforting to know that there was at least a certain amount of rhyme and reason still left in the world.


 

view from cable car, Sandia Mts.

From there it was off to Roswell. Our real goal was the Carlsbad Caverns further south but we knew we wouldn't get there today and settled on Roswell as our goal for the day. We arrived there around 6:00 and after Elise's usual motel negotiation,  settled on a room at a local motel.

 We found out that there was the New Mexico State Fair in town and went to see it that evening. We ate an Indian burger (a hamburger on two slices of Indian frybread), walked past all the carnival rides and games, did a quick browse through the big hall with booths touting various local politicians and things for sale, spent a little more time in a hall featuring a model train display and displays by various schools, community service institutions and health centers, and finally sat ourselves down at an outdoor stage where a fairly entertaining magician was performing magic tricks, primarily for the kids.

We took a raincheck on the comedian that was to follow the magician and called it a night.

A day in Albuquerque

 Our motel room was on the third floor and faced the area where all of the balloons from the big Balloon Fiesta were supposed to ascend at 7:00. We were at our window at 7:15, and over the next half hour or so did see about a dozen balloons take off. It was interesting but the balloons were too far away to see well and there were only a dozen of them - many fewer than we expected. After a half hour or so the balloons were gone and it was time to move on.

My next stop was car maintenance, not nearly as colorful as balloon ascension, but necessary My car has been doing well, and I want to keep it that way, so I made a trip to the nearest Jiffy Lube to change my oil and filter. I had never used Jiffy Lube before, but they were quick, courteous, and thorough, and I was back at the motel by 9:00.

                                             petroglyphs on mountain, near Albuquerque

Our next stop was a mesa on the western side of Albuquerque where Pueblo Indians had scratched petroglyphs (pictures or symbols depicting various places or events in their lives) on the rocks. Viewing the petroglyphs involved a steep climb over a rocky path to the top of the mesa, but it was worth the climb. We saw quite a number of petroglyphs, and at the top of the mesa one of the park rangers was available to answer our questions and tell us more about the various drawings we had seen. The specific meanings of most of the petroglyphs are often not known. Current Pueblo Indians may know some of the meanings, although the same symbol or figure might have a different meaning for different groups of Indians, but they generally consider these drawings secret and sacred, so even if they know, they ain't necessarily tellin'.

We went from there to the Old City section of Albuquerque, a colorful area of small courtyards branching off of the main street, with stores selling food and various Indian and other crafts. Most of the products were made by local artisans, but a few of the cheaper items did bear the label, Made in China.
We had lunch outdoors at one of the large plazas where a band was playing, and for dessert one of the best pieces of baklava with which I have ever had the pleasure of indulging myself. It had just come out of the oven and it was full of nuts and a light honey -delicious!

We then spent a good bit of the rest of the afternoon in a small park with a bandstand in the center, which brought back memories of trips to Mexico and the Zocalo which is always the center of activity in the town. And just like in Mexico, the park was surrounded on three sides by small shops selling local crafts. In many cases the person who had made the articles was also selling them from a small stand outside the shops. I suppose that the main difference between this park and the Zocalos in Mexico is that here one could shop at leisure without being pressured by people who needed whatever sales they made on a given day just to barely feed and shelter themselves and their families.




high school band in Albuquerque

On the fourth side of the park was a church. Elise briefly visited the church, and then we browsed through the shops but mostly just sat in the park listening to the various musical groups, including a group of about 8 or 9 high school students dressed in Mariachi outfits and singing songs in Spanish.

 It was a very pleasant day, and we didn't mind that we had neither the time nor the energy left to see the other places we had planned to visit in Albuquerque.

A day in Los Alamos

The morning dawned somewhat chilly but sunny and beautiful. As we drove off towards Los Alamos, the temperature rose to a very comfortable 70 degrees. The area through which we drove was also very beautiful with a plain on one side and mountains just behind that. As promised, the last few miles to Los Alamos were very winding as we crossed the mountain range in front of us, but we arrived safely in late morning.

Los Alamos is a very attractive city, which was built almost from scratch during World War II. There was only a ranch school and a few farms in the area, all of which the government bought up, displacing those who were living there. There were no poor people since everyone in town needed a  government clearance to be there, and were either related to the Manhatten Project or were providing some kind of service to these people. Even today, we had to pass through a checkpost at the edge of town before we were admitted. I guess we didn't look very dangerous, since the lady in the booth just wished us a good day and passed us through, but I doubt if there are any other towns in the US that have a similar checkpost.

Today, there are a fair number of attractive shops and eating places as well as attractive housing and two interesting museums, but defense department research still seems to be the major industry of the town.
We visited both of the museums. The Los Alamos Museum had exhibits that began with prehistoric people who had lived in the area and went forward to the Manhattan Project, including an especially interesting section on Robert Oppenheimer, who originally headed the project and eventually lost his government clearance during the McCarthy period.
The second museum, larger and more modern than the first, had a large section, which included an 18 minute film, on the role of the Manhattan Project in the defense of the United States and a smaller section on other government research (e.g., the Hubble Telescope) that has less military relevance. It was, all in all, a very stimulating morning.

After lunch we were back on the road on our way to Albuquerque. Most of the drive was on Interstate 25, with a speed limit of 75 miles per hour - quite a change from yesterday. This was the week of the Balloon Fiesta, where hot air and helium balloon enthusiasts from all over the world come to fly their balloons. This is quite a major event which draws thousands of people and hundreds of balloons, so we looked forward to seeing some of them take off next morning. We also spent most of the evening planning other things we would like to do during a day in Albuquerque.

On the road to Los Alamos

Today we drove to the Aztec Ruins National Monument. The ruins have been mistakenly called Aztec (the Aztecs lived in South America), but it is one of the largest sites anywhere of Indian ruins. Some of the ruins have been reconstructed and others are from the original buildings and are in fairly good condition. We were able to walk thru the site and see the buildings up close.

In the afternoon we drove on to Cuba, NM, which was a small and very rundown town. The same could be said of the motels available there, so we decided to move on to Los Alamos. Instead of taking the long four-lane highway, I decided that we would take the scenic route through the mountains.

This turned out to be quite a trip. The first several miles were indeed quite scenic - a narrow road with pine and aspen forests on one side and meadows and pastures with grazing cows on the other. The leaves of the aspen trees had turned yellow and were beautiful. At one point the cows crossed the road in front of us and we had to stop and wait for them.

After about 15 miles, however, the macadam road ended and we found ourselves on a dirt road with a fair share of ruts and potholes. My speed slowed to about 20 miles an hour, often less.
Eventually, the road again became macadam. That was the good news. The bad news is that the road was now covered with more than an inch of white sleet. Fortunately a truck or two going through had left a track of clear road on which I could drive. Since there were also heavy rain showers,  some fog, and lots of curves in the road, progress was slow and it was getting dark. And we still had more than 30 miles to go to reach Los Alamos, including a few miles at the end reported to have even more severe curves and turns than we had already seen. We had to consider the possibility that we might have to spend a very cold night parked in the car by the side of the road - not an inviting prospect.



rainbow outside La Cueva ski lodge



Fortunately, my guardian angel who seemed to be napping on the job, woke up, and there around the next curve was La Cueva Ski Lodge - a restaurant, a general store and several rooms for rent. At this point we were prepared to pay almost anything to get off the road and have a nice warm place to spend the night. Fortunately, we were between tourist seasons and rooms were available. We ended up in a very nice room with all the amenities of a good motel (including heat) and also including a large selection of VCR's for a mere 85 dollars (plus tax). As a bonus, we had just finished bringing things in from the car when we saw a beautiful double rainbow right in front of our room. It was almost biblical - like Noah coming out of the ark and seeing a rainbow sign that all would be well! So in the end we spent a nice cozy evening watching "Jurassic Park" on a DVD and dodged the bullet of a cold night on the road. Whew!

Mesa Verde at last

My Toyota Prius seems to prefer being out West. From Philadelphia to Los Angeles I was getting 45-46 miles to the gallon, but since I've started back, even though I'm carrying more weight now that Elise is with me, I've been getting 51-52 miles to the gallon. I don't have an explanation, but I'm not complaining.


                                          view from KOA cabin, Cortez, New Mexico

I must also acknowledge that I have become a regular customer if not necessarily a fan of two businesses that are at least politically incorrect. One is Walmart - it's one stop shopping, the prices are cheap, the service is good, and they're everywhere.

 The second is KOA. As a place to camp in a tent, it is definitely not the place to go as I think I mentioned in a previous blog, but as the nights have gotten colder, we have been staying in KOA cabins and finding them a fairly good compromise between creature comfort and enjoying the outdoors. The cabins are pretty basic - a bed (we provide the bedding), a desk, night table, a couple of chairs and WIFI which is usually but not always free. There is also usually a laundromat available. There is a picnic table in front of the cabin and a swing on the porch of the cabin. You have to trundle over to the public bathrooms, which include showers, when the need arises. The price is about the same as a cheap motel, but the most important thing, as compared to sleeping in one's tent, is that the cabin contains a heater - a great advantage when the temperature is dropping into the high thirties at night. The major advantage over a motel is that one can eat out at the picnic table for both breakfast and dinner. The price of food from the supermarket is much lower than eating restaurant meals and it is just generally a more pleasant experience, since the site usually comes with a view of the beautiful scenery through which we have been driving for the past several days. There is some of the  feel of camping with less of the discomfort.

Finally, just a word about camping in America in 2010. If you have no interest whatsoever in this topic, you can skip this paragraph. First, I will acknowledge that there are still a fair number of people camping in tents. I think, however, that there are fewer than there were during our trip 40 years ago. The campground industry is not very interested in tent campers. They are interested in RV's(recreational vehicles;i.e., campers and trailers). For every campground we pass on the road that provides for tenters, there are at least one or two that provide only for RV's. Even most of the campgrounds that provide space for tents are filled mostly with RV's.
These RV's are generally driven by retired people who are on the move. Some come to a particular place and stay for a week or more while visiting the surrounding area; others are traveling long distances either to see the country or to visit children and grandchildren. There may be a recession in America; there are certainly many older people hurting financially; but there is also a population of older retired people who are well off and have the energy as well as the financial means to take to the road in one of these RV's.

We spent a lazy morning around our cabin and didn't get out until almost 11:00. We started with a visit to the Cortez Cultural Center. We wanted to find out if a convention in town this weekend for Indian trading post traders would be of interest to us. At first it seemed that it would just be a trade convention really designed for the traders and not for the general public. There was, however, an exhibit on the wall at the rear of the Cultural Center with quotes from long time trading post operators and newspaper articles about the trading posts which were more interesting than I had anticipated. The trading post operators evidently once held a unique niche in the life of the Indian community. They were the Indians primary contact with the outside world. While some traders apparently exploited the Indians with whom they dealt, others developed close relationships, both financial and personal with their Indian clientele and helped them to navigate the white world around them. Now, however, this is a dying institution. Indians come and shop at the same Walmarts as do their white neighbors, and they have other sources for marketing the arts and crafts they create. The trading post has been reduced to just one more outlet for the sale of Indian jewelry and pottery. Instead of going to the convention, however, I settled on purchasing a CD of trader stories, which Elise and I will listen to in the car.

                                                     ladder to cliff dwelling of Indians

We then took a lunch break. We passed up a new restaurant serving Mexican food and ended up at a more modest but also more local "home cookin'" place. As soon as we were seated, the "chef" a tall black man with a haircut like mine and a soft southern drawl, put down a sample of his barbecued beef  - the special for the day - on our table. He explained, "This comes with baked beans, my grandma's secret recipe - special. I also make a great brisket, but I'm sold out of that." The beef was, in fact, delicious, and I immediately ordered the "special" on fry bread,which is an Indian bread which is sort of a cross between regular bread and funnel cake. We'd had it before at the Pow Wow in Panguitch, so I knew I would like it - which I did.

Our next stop (at last) was Mesa Verde National Park. the park itself was located on a large mesa and was  more green than any of the other parks we had seen (I guess that's why they call it Mesa Verde - duhhh).

                                                        cliff dwellings of prehistoric Indians

 The main feature of the park, however, is not the scenery but the fact that there are considerable remains of the cliff dwellings of Indian groups who had lived there during the 12 and 13 hundreds. We took a half hour tour with a park ranger to the Cliff Palace which was a major site for this prehistoric community of Indians. To get there we had to go down a long series of steps.  On the way out, we climbed ladders similar to the ones the Indians had used to reach their village. The park ranger explained various aspects of the life and culture of these people and it was an interesting and educational experience.

Afterwards we took a short walk on another trail and saw other cliff dwellings from a distance and also looked down into Soda Canyon, so named because of the white color of the rocks.

Morning in a Zuni Indian Pueblo

Instead of heading north toward Mesa Verde this morning, Elise and I decided on one more diversion and headed 30 miles south towards a Zuni Pueblo. We had read a short brochure which made this seem like a good opportunity to see the daily life of an American Indian community. When we arrived, we followed the instructions on the brochure and went directly to the Visitors Center. It was closed. A friendly young man who was selling his craft articles from a small stand at the entrance to the museum explained that the person in charge of the museum was out leading a guided tour, but that she would be back fairly soon and might be doing another tour in a little while. He also told us where she had gone and we decided to try to catch up with her and the tour. We couldn't find her but we did find a combination art supply store and gift shop with local crafts. The art supplies consisted largely of containers of rocks of various sizes from all over the world, which local artists used to make their jewelry and other items.

Shortly after we returned to the Visitors Center, the lady in charge returned from her tour, which had only included a visit to a local cathedral currently under reconstruction, so we hadn't really missed much. I spent some time just talking with her about life in the community. In addition to the usual brands of Christians, many of the residents are also adherents of the Zuni religion and have dance celebrations related to this religion from time to time. She said that their religious practices and beliefs were secret and she couldn't tell me anything else about them. I was also curious about whether high school graduates in the town ever went on to college. She said that a fairly large percentage did go to college, but that few of them returned to Zuni City.

We had read about a bakery in town where one could watch them make Zuni bread and after some direction found it on our own. What we actually saw was somewhat disappointing in that it was simply a house with a table in the front room on which were several loaves of fairly standard bread (sourdough, raisin bread, plain white bread) and apple turnovers. The bread was from yesterday; today's bread was still in the large kilns in back of the house. The lady we spoke to told us that the bakery had been in her family since her grandmother had either purchased or started it in 1975. We bought a loaf of the sourdough bread and a very tasty apple turnover. The bread was very dense; a little went a long way. Elise liked it, but to me it just tasted like day-old bread.

We then went to see the local museum. The sign on the door said that it was open from 8:00 to 5:00. Under that was a handwritten sign which said, "Back at 3:00" - so much for the museum.
Our next stop was the town's Senior Center. We were warmly welcomed by the receptionist who explained that most of the seniors connected with the center either worked in the schools as volunteer classroom aides or as volunteers visiting homebound elderly. After doing their volunteer work in the morning, they came to the Center for lunch in a bright, attractive dining room. We arrived a little before lunchtime and chatted a while with a couple of the women who had arrived a little early from their volunteer jobs. I was interested in whether there was still a Zuni language that anyone spoke. They told me that there were still some people who spoke Zuni and that the language was also taught in the schools. Everyone we met,  however,  seemed perfectly comfortable speaking English, and our overall impression was not how unique this community was, but rather how similar it seemed to any small town in America.

From there it was back north towards Cortez, just over the New Mexico border into Colorado and the closest town to the Mesa Verde National Park. We stopped for a little while along the way at Shiprock to see the fair in progress as we were driving by. Under a big tent people were sitting on bales of hay to watch about twenty people who were on a dance floor at the front of the tent learning country and western dances. There were various booths selling Indian crafts and food. We bought some steamed corn. We were surprised that it wasn't hot, but the man in the booth said that they had not been allowed to heat it. It didn't matter; the corn was delicious and I bought another ear before we left.

We arrived at a KOA just east of Cortez and rented a cabin for the night, since we knew that at this altitude the night would be quite cold. After settling in, we took a very pleasant walk on a trail from the campground that led around a small lake. We saw a small flock of geese honking their way south in a perfect V after a brief stopover at the lake, and we watched the sun set behind the hills. I made a spaghetti,cheese, and spinach dinner, which has become my culinary specialty.

Elise had a very good day healthwise but started coughing again here at the campground. We think it might be her fall allergies, in which case our camping days may be over. We'll see.