Alien Caverns

How can anyone say they visited New Mexico without visiting the small town of Roswell? Made famous by the 1947 incident that sparked the modern UFO phenomena, this was a town that we at least, could not pass up. We decided to abandon Route 66 for the day and take a side trip south to see both Roswell and more importantly Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Heading south from the interstate there is nothing for miles and miles except open farmland. Rangeland is perhaps a better word because these farmers

aren't growing anything except herds of cattle seen off in the distance. After driving about 3 hours straight south and passing nothing except one small gas station we pulled into the small town of Roswell. We hadn't really expected to find much here since we had heard from numerous people along our travels that the town was nothing more than a big disappointment. Indeed it

was. The town is filled with very subtle hints regarding their alien visit. The most obvious places heralding the past are ironically the chain stores. The Comfort Inn, KFC, and Arby's all have signs along the lines of "Aliens Welcome" or "Alien Seating Available" and things of that nature. As

always the McDonald's outdid the rest and was by far the most interesting. It had been completely transformed into a UFO complete with a space-themed playset inside. In the center of town there was a UFO Museum and a few local souvenir stores crammed full of everything you can possibly imagine. Here the street lights were even made out of alien heads, donned

appropriately with Santa hats for the holidays. After about an hour of messing around downtown Roswell we headed south for Carlsbad. Even though we began our journey south from the interstate early in the morning we still were not able to reach Carlsbad Caverns until about

2:30 p.m. We thought we were making decent time and planned to spend the rest of the day inside the National Park. We were astonished to find out as we entered the park that the trails and caves started closing at 3 p.m. We hightailed it to the visitor center and found out that we were just in time to get a full tour of the place. We were one of the last people to enter the cave through the natural entrance for the day. The ranger told us that if he could only do

one thing here it would be take this hike, and thats what we did. Because of the time of year that we visited the park, we missed out on one of the main attractions of the park; the bats. Carlsbad Caverns houses an enormous number of bats in a section of the cave known as "the bat cave" where the floor is known to be covered by a 40 ft. layer of guano. The bats fly south to Mexico in

the winter months so we were unable to see their nighttime flight from the cave. Regardless, Carlsbad Caverns was easily the most impressive cave I have ever entered. I could spend hours trying to explain and describe the underground wonders that we saw here. Its mind-boggling to think that it was all formed by the slow drip of water

over millions of years. We walked a total of 3 miles underneath the earth passing by vast caverns, unique structures, and bottomless pits. It was a shock to realize that the sun was still shining after we emerged from the eternal darkness of the underworld. We shopped around the visitor center until the national park closed down. We made a stop in a town called Artesia, half way between Carlsbad and Roswell, for dinner at The Wellhead Brewpub. From here we continued on through the night making it back to the same rest area we stayed at the night before, ready to continue on Route 66 in the morning.