Okay, we only spent half a day there...but half a day in Roswell, NM might be half a day too many. By the end of our visit, Kelly and I were convinced that the city was actually inhabited by aliens long before the 1947 crash. You see, after many, many secret landings, someone got sloppy. Humans started investigating the crash and created a big hype. The aliens were smart enough to know that humans would flock to any place where "UFOs" had been spotted, so in order to cover up their crash landing, they deliberately leaked the truth, opened some shops, and established the alien capital of the world! Who'd believe you if you said you saw an actual alien in Roswell? No one! See, their plan was (is) perfect.
We did find actual pie in Pie Town, New Mexico. Thank goodness! We were routed there via a 12 mile long, BUMPY dirt road. Thanks to the abundance of coffee from Ancient Way that morning Kelly had a dire need to pee the entire time, so, needless to say, the journey was less than pleasant. We came upon what seemed to be Pie Town but could only find churches and dilapidated houses; where was the PIE??? Seeing as though we still needed a bathroom, we decided to hit the highway and find a gas station, giving up on our dream of eating pie in a town named after the sweet pizza. Fortunately, there was a whole colony devoted to pie right down the road from Church Town. Stopping in a diner called the Pie-o-neer, we found an assortment of pies and -- thank you, loving mother of George -- a bathroom!
After this brief stop, we drove and drove and drove across the southern part of New Mexico. Without even planning it, we ended up at the Very Large Array near Socorro, NM. The VLA is a huge center for radio astronomy, it's well-known from a scene in the movie Contact where Jodie Foster sits in one of the huge antennas. Thinking about the data that these antennas collect definitely brought me back to my childhood and young adult years when I was obsessed with outer space. It's cool to know that my fascination with the workings of the universe is still alive and well, even if I have taken a hiatus from the constant study of such things.
Let's see, I wrote about Roswell above so I guess the next part of our journey brought us into Texas. We knew we were close to the border when we started seeing oil drillers spread out across the landscape. Black gold. Pretty much immediately after entering the great state of Texas we saw a "tea party patriot" bumper sticker, woohoo! We also discovered the grossest thing in the entire world: highways completely overrun by huge locusts!! EWWW! At first, we thought they were crawfish, but there's no water, so that didn't make a whole lotta sense. We got the scoop from the State Park volunteer at our campsite in San Angelo. Apparently, locusts aren't that uncommon down here and, besides cars, their lives are threatened by TARANTULAS! Great, let's keep camping here please...We're heading into Austin and San Antonio tomorrow. The beautiful rural landscapes have been nice, but these city girls are ready for the...city. hmm, thought I could make that more poetic, but you get the picture.
:)
ps. we're in a Barnes and Noble right now and the cashier is talking to a man about how she always lets tarantulas go when she catches them. The man said he always lets the rattlesnakes go too and then started telling her how to recognize a snake that's 10 times more poisonous than rattlesnakes. ummm, I don't think I could live in the South.
pss. it is HOT down here!!!!!
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