Roswell: Alien Zone

It's been a while since I've been on a road trip, and while I was daydreaming about Roswell the other day I realized that I never shared photos from one of my favorite attractions: Alien Zone. Alien Zone was built in 1998 by a local commercial artist and pastor, and features approximately 20 different dioramas with which visitors are encouraged to interact and take photos. My sister texted me about Alien Zone when we were planning our trip and it was just as cheesy and ridiculous as we expected.

The dioramas are pretty elaborate and entirely hilarious. Each one features an alien or two in a different "real life" situation: at a kitchen table, passed out on the couch, drinking a beer, climbing out of a crashed UFO, awaiting an autopsy, bartending, having a cookout, etc. A lot of the dioramas have seen better days, condition-wise, but the homemade quality is also part of the appeal.

The scenes are really quite clever, and set up specifically for great photo-ops—the kitchen table scene is oriented upside down so when you flip the photo, it looks like you're on the ceiling. You can crawl inside of the crashed UFO, sit next to an alien in an outhouse, and grab a cold one from the bar. I'll spare you the photos that included my sister, brother-in-law, niece and I interacting with the scenes, but trust me—the admission was just $3 a person, but the memories (and photos) we made were priceless.

White's City + Carlsbad Caverns

 On our recent Roswell road trip—after our short hike through Bottomless Lakes State Park—we headed to Carlsbad Caverns. We planned to spend the entire day there, exploring the cave until it was time to watch the bat flight. But before we even got to the cave, we stopped at White's City, located four miles east of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

White's City was established as a campsite in the early 1900s, and over the years grew to include a Pueblo Motel, drug and grocery store, museum, chair lift ride to the top of Walnut Canyon, theater, water park, arcade, gift shop, saloon and other touristy attractions. Unfortunately White's City's heyday appears to be over—aside from an RV park, gift shop, (terrible) restrooms and a desolate restaurant, not much else appeared open or inhabited.

After extreme build-up in the form of what seemed like hundreds of signs along the highway advertising the many attributes of White's City, the actual destination was a bit of a let down. But, like a lot of roadside attractions today, if you look hard enough you can still catch glimpses of its glory days via its signage, spacious—albeit dusty—gift shop, and old-timey Wild West-theme.

After squishing some pennies and buying a dusty floaty pen (depicting the bat flight!), we headed to the main attraction. Carlsbad Cave National Monument was established in 1923, but the limestone cavern is 250 to 280 million years old. We took the self-guided tour down through the natural entrance, a 1.25 mile hike with a descent of 750 feet. I definitely recommend the natural entrance trail if you're comfortable walking distances, but there's also an elevator that will deposit you right into the Big Room.

All along the trail I kept oohing and ahhing over the formations—nature is really, really nuts—and I couldn't possibly imagine how it could get any better. But when we finally made it to the Big Room, I realized why it was the star—it's breathtaking. The Big Room trail is another 1.25 miles, but we were forced to take the shortcut by rangers who told us politely that we were overstaying our welcome (the last elevator up was at 4:30pm, but they started putting the pressure on us around 4pm).

But even after the kitsch of White's City and the grandeur of the cavern, the bat flight still managed to impress. Photos and videos are not allowed during the flight, and it's nice (in addition to being helpful for the bats) to actually experience something nowadays without the pressure of documenting it in just the right way. I think this about most things, but the bat flight really needs to be experienced—there are videos, but they can't possibly capture the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of sitting beneath thousands and thousands of flying bats. I didn't know there were that many bats in the world, let alone in one cavern—we watched for an hour until it was too dark to see, but the ranger said the flight can last from two to four hours. 

New Mexico: Bottomless Lakes State Park

Bottomless Lakes State Park is located along the Pecos River, about 14 miles southeast of Roswell in New Mexico. It contains nine small, circular lakes, formed by collapsed limestone caves—Lazy Lagoon, Cottonwood Lake, Mirror Lake, Figure-Eight Lake (they count this as two lakes), Pasture Lake, Lost Lake, Lea Lake and my favorite, Devil's Inkwell. These natural sinkholes (called cenotes) are not fed by streams, but rather by underground water. Because the evaporation rate is greater than the rate at which they are refilled by rainwater, the lake water is brackish—with a higher salinity than freshwater, but not as high as seawater.

The nine lakes aren't really "bottomless"—they range from 17 to 90 feet deep—but appear that way due to blue-green algae and other aquatic plants. Cowboys dropped lengths of rope into the lakes, but couldn't reach the bottom and the name stuck. Legend has it that things dropped in one lake have resurfaced in others, sometimes miles away, but the park ranger insisted that this was just heresay. The area is also known for producing "Pecos diamonds," which aren't actual diamonds, but quartz crystals formed in the gypsum-rich soil.

 We didn't spend much time at the park, mostly because it was crazy hot and I was getting devoured alive by mosquitoes. Since most of my life has been spent on the East Coast, desert landscapes will always fascinate me. The red rock formations, dusty soil, cacti, lizards and crazy beetles all felt so foreign to me—maybe the feeling was mutual and I was simply an exotic delicacy to the New Mexican mosquito palate.

Roswell: Aliens

 My sister and I had been planning a roadtrip to Roswell for a few years, and we finally made it happen last month. She lives in Dallas, which is a 7-hour drive from Roswell, so we made a proper roadtrip of it (shout out to my bro-in-law for doing all of the driving!). Whenever I mentioned to anyone that I was going to Roswell, those that had been there cautioned that there wasn't much to see in town. I was prepared for a small, cheesy, tourist-trap of a town—and while Roswell was all of those things it was also entirely delightful because it was all of those things.

 In July of 1947, debris was found on a farm about 30 miles north of Roswell, New Mexico. Whether that debris belonged to a weather balloon, secret military spy aircraft or an alien UFO is up to you to decide. The UFO Museum has some fascinating information on the crash, as well as UFO sightings throughout the years. My favorite section was on photographs that were proven to be frauds—a top hat, a hubcab and a button were just a few of the objects that people have used to produce fake UFO photographs.

I definitely believe that there are "aliens" out there—simply based on the fact that the universe is infinite, Earth can't possibly be the only planet with intelligent life. Do I believe that little green men crashed their spacecraft into the New Mexico desert in 1947? Not really. But I couldn't get enough of all of the aliens—gray and green—in Roswell, and finding them everywhere never got old.

Luckily for cheesy, tourist-trap-loving people like me, Roswell definitely embraces their notoriety as the alien capital of the US. Aliens and UFOs are everywhere: on the back of cars, on the side of the highway, on restaurant signs, manhole covers and bakery windows. I was immediately

enamored with the UFO-shaped McDonald's

, and even the streetlights have been turned into aliens thanks to local artists (I do wish they were green, though).

Aside from the museum and a few other attractions, the majority of downtown is filled with souvenir shops. If you can imagine an alien-themed trinket, you can probably find it in Roswell. I bought a floaty pen and made a few squished pennies, but we discovered that the best t-shirts were at a Walgreens next to our hotel (for $5.99!). I'm so glad that we finally made it to Roswell, which was—along with day trips to White Sands and Carlsbad Caverns—definitely worth the drive.

Muffler Man: Fox Cave

On the way from Roswell, New Mexico to White Sands National Monument along East Highway 70—an hour before we came across the World's Largest Pistachio—we drove past Fox Cave. Realizing they had a Muffler Man, we made a note to stop on the way back. When we did stop, it was about ten minutes before they closed, so I frantically ran around the grounds snapping photos of all the wonderful roadside kitsch.

Fox Cave's claim to fame is that it was once used as a hideout by Billy the Kid. The primarily limestone cave was originally known as "Ice Cave," and only one large room is open to the public. The gift shop is full of Native American souvenirs, aliens and gemstones. They also have a "gem mine" which might be a scam, but 12-year-old me would have definitely been into it.

I was thrilled to meet my ninth (!) Muffler Man along with a menagerie of other roadside creatures. Fox Cave reminded me a lot of Trader's World, and their Muffler Men are very similar. I love that this Muffler Man points to the entrance with one hand and holds a gem in the other—he's also in really great condition, and looks as if he just received a fresh coat of paint.

There's a "cemetary" with a tombstone for Billy the Kid, a handful of dinosaurs and dinosaur heads, a buffalo, carved wooden aliens and a cement-mixer-spaceship. I love the random assortment of roadside animals—statues that have no real purpose and don't make sense together, but is there a better break in the monotony of the road than to glance over and see two huge fiberglass hands rising from the ground?

Fox Cave also has its share of strange mannequins, including two guys sitting outside of a jail (photo-op alert!), a miner that has seen better days and a dismembered torso resting on a tractor. Fox Cave was a quick stop, but that's part of what I love about roadside attractions. Sure White Sands was incredible, but the journey there ended up being just as memorable.

White Sands National Monument

After spending a day in Roswell, we had a spare day before heading to Carlsbad. We decided to drive two hours to the White Sands National Monument, and I'm so, so glad we did. White Sands is like nothing else I've ever seen, or will ever see again. Located in the Tularosa Basin in between Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico, White Sands is 275 square miles of gypsum sand dunes, the largest such dunefield in the world.

WSNM is controlled by the National Park Service and you drive through the park in a big loop. You can stop along the way and explore the dunes, and I was surprised at how much freedom we had. We stopped at a few different points in the park, but all of the dunes start to look the same after a while. There are bathrooms at every stop, and cute little picnic shelters that somehow manage to look both vintage and futuristic.

I had read that you're allowed to sled on the dunes, and they conveniently sell sleds (and buy back used ones) at the gift shop. I bought two, and we all took turns on the dunes. The funniest thing about the sledding is that as you're hovering over the edge of a massive dune, it looks terrifying—I kept imagining this scene from Christmas Vacation. But once you start going, the sand turns out to be a less-than-ideal sledding surface and you descend relatively slowly. I even bought wax and applied it liberally but it was a bit anti-climactic—although that didn't stop me from wiping out in slow motion, as I do in most athletic situations.

We arrived at White Sands at about noon, which is probably the very worst time to be there—it was hot. Luckily for a family of tourist-hating tourists, this also meant that the park felt almost empty, which was worth the dehydration and potential sun-stroke. Speaking of which, White Sands is very much a desert—the first one I've ever experienced—and the signs reminding you to make sure you have water are not to be taken lightly. During our visit we noticed no less than four ambulances tending to people who presumably became overheated, and I can't imagine what it's like in July or August.

The sand feels like beach sand, but finer, and cool to the touch. The whole area also had a vaguely chemical smell that I imagine comes from the gypsum, used to make plaster of Paris and fertilizers. It's so strange to be surrounded by so much sand but not an ocean, and the mountains in the background only added to the surreal moonscape. I imagine that White Sands is as close as I'll ever come to feeling as if I've landed on another planet, without leaving the US.

World's Largest Pistachio

If I had one dream job, it would be for someone to pay me to travel to each and every one of the World's Largest Things. I love strange, roadside attractions pretty much more than anything else. Maybe it was all those early years I spent watching Pee-Wee's Playhouse, but I love anything novelty-sized—bigger, or smaller than it should be. I've seen the third World's Largest Garden Gnome, the World's Largest Longaberger Basket, the World's Tallest Uncle Sam and the World's Longest Go-Kart Track, but I'm always eager to add more to that list.

As we were driving to White Sands alongside highway 54/70 in Alamogordo, New Mexico, we came upon McGinn's Pistachio Tree Ranch , home of the World's Largest Pistachio. My sister and I both immediately recognized it from Roadside America and yelled "AHHH IT'S THE WORLD'S LARGEST PISTACHIO PULLLLL OVERRRR," to my startled brother-in-law behind the wheel.

McGinn's is an 111-acre pistachio farm and vineyard, and of course there's a large shop to explore after the huge pistachio lures you in. They sell pistachio-emblazoned everything, and an old miner (not unlike the ones we saw at Howe Caverns and the Niagra Wax Museum) greets you at the door. But of course I was most excited to discover that McGinn's has their very own pressed penny machine, featuring the pistachio with the words "Alamogordo, Pistachioland."

The World's Largest Pistachio is not a real pistachio (this should be obvious by now), but it's big enough and ridiculous enough to be a true roadside gem. The plaque beside it reads: "This monument is dedicated to the lasting memory of Thomas Michael McGinn (1929-2007). The founder of the pistachio tree ranch, this little slice of New Mexico desert was Tom's canvas to create his tireless legacy his tireless dedication to his dream made his farm the success it is today. Tom dreamed big, expected big, and accomplished big things. He would have said this monument is not big enough. His legacy lives on."

There's really no point to the huge pistachio—other than a mandatory photo-op—but I bet most of the people that stopped at McGinn's did so because of it. We certainly did, and ended up buying souvenirs and pistachios before getting on the road again. The world needs more people like Thomas McGinn and his big dreams—and more novelty-sized roadside attractions to honor them.

Smokey Bear Historical Park

On our way back from a day spent sledding the dunes at White Sands National Monument during a recent New Mexico road trip, we weren't quite ready to call it quits for the day. My sister had mentioned that we were nearby Smokey Bear's grave, and even though we knew we weren't going to make it before the museum closed for the day, we still thought it was a worthwhile stop.

Smokey Bear was a real bear cub, originally called "Hotfoot," who was found by firefighters in 1950, badly injured after a fire in Lincoln National Forest. He was renamed Smokey, and came to represent the character that had been created during WWII to help educate campers on the dangers and destructive force of forest fires. Although he lived in the National Zoo in DC (alongside Ham the Astrochimp!), he was brought back to, and buried in Capitan, NM when he died in 1976. 

Of course I'd heard of Smokey Bear, but I'd never realized that he'd been modeled after a real bear. Ever since I visited my first pet cemetery, I've been eager to see as many not-exactly-traditional cemeteries and graves as I can—I was delighted to be able to add Smokey to that list. His grave is marked by a carved wooden bear cub and plaque, along a wooded path that includes statues, handpainted signs, beautiful flowers and at least one praying mantis (although I can't guarantee that last one will stick around). 

The park is such a good kitschy roadside stop—including a squished penny machine and fully-stocked gift shop that was maddeningly closed. The entire (very small) town of Capitan is very proud of its hometown hero—there's a Smokey motel, restaurant and even grocery store. Even if I'm forever disappointed to not be able to add a Smokey squished penny to my collection, I am glad we got to pay our respects to such an iconic figure.

Roswell: UFO McDonald's

My sister, brother-in-law and niece recently hit the road from Dallas, with our destination set at Roswell, New Mexico. We all knew that there wasn't that much to see in Roswell, but we had our hearts set on a kitschy, old fashioned, family vacation and Roswell turned out to be the perfect destination. Sure, downtown Roswell is basically one step up from a one-stoplight town, but there were plenty of alien-themed things to satisfy our need for kitsch.

One of our first stops was the UFO-themed McDonald's in the center of town. Along Roswell's main street (appropriately called Main Street) I counted no fewer than three McDonald's within a very short distance (in addition to three Subways and three Sonics), but only one is shaped like a UFO. Actually only a portion of the restaurant is UFO-shaped, but in a town that is begging for novelty, alien-themed architecture, we were grateful that someone had stepped up to the plate.

The inside is shiny and industrial, like any good UFO should be, but it's the space-themed McDonald's characters that really turn it up a notch. Maybe it was the formative years I spent working at a McDonald's as a teen, but I've always liked the strange cast, from Grimace (what is he!) to Birdie, to the Hamburglar, the Fry Kids and even Ronald. I don't recall the chicken nugget character, but I defy you to find anything cuter than an anthropomorphic nugget floating in a space bubble.

There's a great mural next to the drive-thru that we almost missed, featuring even more cute space nuggets, and a ufo painted in the parking lot in case you needed a spot to land yours. As great as it shines in the daylight, it's even better at night when it lights up, looking as if it's ready to take-off at any moment.