2009 NM Day 4 and beyond

Wednesday morning, we checked out of the hotel and headed off to the Roswell Alien Research Center and Museum. It was a fairly cheesy museum, but interesting nonetheless. My opinion after reading all the various things is that the government was testing some secret device and covered it up rather clumsily by sticking to the “weather balloon” story. If they had just said it was an experimental device, no one would have been much interested. It was interesting to see that most of the interviews that were taken were written down many years after the original events. I wonder if people’s memories were colored by subsequent press coverage and UFO investigators questions.

Proof! Well, actually a movie prop.



Aliens abound at night------------------and are fully revealed by day


We met a very interesting group of girls from Montreal, on a university field trip. They were all in a Master’s of Marketing or Anthropology program and their trip was to determine how stories and myths were created and to interview people to see what they believed about those stories. Roswell was their assignment. I would be interested to read their papers.

Poor little Roswell isn’t much of a town and really depends on the alien influence to bring people in.


We sell it all!

After museum touring we had a coffee from this little coffee shop – owned by the pastor of a local church. It was very charming inside – decorated like a French country garden. It was a wi-fi café so there were lots of people working on their computers and drinking coffee.



Once we left Roswell, we headed to Taos, which was a drive through a lot of nothing for the first few hours.

Nothing


More nothing

Still more nothing


Finally! A little bit of something on the horizon!

We got into Taos about 5 and settled into our great little Comfort Suites Hotel. I wasn’t feeling too great – we didn’t know it then, but we had picked up an alien bug in Roswell and it was to make our lives very interesting for the next week or so.

I had the shakes, aches and shivers that night – not much sleep. Keith went skiing on Thursday and when he called me to see how I was, told me to call our Pulmonologist and get a prescription for an antibiotic. By that time I was coughing up the icky stuff. I did call, and he picked up the Rx on his way home. Thursday night he got the crud and neither of us slept. He called in for a prescription for himself on Friday and stayed home from skiing that day. We finally rallied enough to go out and get some takeout lunch from a good restaurant (I had been living on instant oatmeal and leftover Subway sandwiches up until this point and was ready for something tasty.)

We ordered a Cobb salad and chicken noodle soup and they were both with an interesting Taos twist. The salad had a whole head of roasted garlic added to the mix – which we abstained from, a half an avocado and garlic roasted chicken. The soup had fresh tiny green beans, garbanzo beans, spinach, tomatoes, red peppers, as well as the normal chicken noodle soup components. We both slept better that night and he went skiing on Saturday (taking it pretty easy though – if there is any way you can take it easy while skiing!)

I forayed out for the first time on Saturday and visited the local animal shelter. It was interesting to see what things they did differently and I got to hold a very nice kitty. I went to visit my favorite little shopping area and as I was getting out of the car, I heard drums. I wondered if there was a parade nearby and followed the sound to the plaza next door. There I found an Aztec celebration. It was the Danza Azteca de Anahuac celebrating in honor of Cuauhtémoc, last defender of the Aztec nation. There were about 30 people dancing, in the most fantastic Aztec costumes. They didn’t allow photographs taken, as it was a religious ceremony, so I just enjoyed it for about an hour. The drum music was sonderful, it reminded me of the Brazilian drummers on the Paul Simon album, Rythym of the Saints. The costumes were very interesting. Some people had fantastic headdresses – here are a couple of pictures I pulled friom the web:

Some of the women wore very simple long dresses slit up the sides, with or without pants undeneath. Everyone wore ankle rattles made from seed pods called ayoyotes. It was really fascinating to listen and watch.
After Keith and his cousin Roger got home from skiing, we went to dinner at the restaurant in the hotel next door. It had a great roaring fire in the fireplace that felt so good to sit near. The firescreen had a metal roadrunner on it (the roadrunner is the state bird of New Mexico.)

After dinner we started packing all the gear in preparation for leaving the next day.

Sunday we packed up and headed down to Albuquerque. The drive through the Rio Grande gorge is one of our favorites, very scenic. The river was running fairly high due to a lot of snow melt.

We stayed in Albuquerque that night and flew out the next morning.

All in all, a great trip – just could have done without the alien invasion!