ROSWELL NEW MEXICO- Lost opportunity

Day 6
​Hereford TX- Roswell NM

Sleep? You thought you could sleep at the park in Hereford? HA HA HA HA HA. What a fool you are. Parks are not made for sleeping. Let me tell you what they are for. They are for locals to drive in and out of until midnight with stereos banging and car doors opening. The freight trains a few blocks away I mentioned earlier were absolutely terrible. As the evening hours grew late the frequency of the trains increased. You can't sleep through a freight train horn that is a few blocks away. You especially can't sleep when a train passes through every 15-30 minutes.... all.... night.... long. Trains are required to blow there horns at every intersection. How many times would that be? I counted 14. Want to know why I counted that? Because I couldn't sleep that's why. The best part was when there were two trains doing it at the same time. Absolutely Magical. 

Tired and groggy we put the camper into traveling formation. It's back to the road for the grind south. Today's agenda was a lazy 150 miles to a campground that is outside of Roswell NM. Haystack Mountain OHV park has some spots to camp at for $5 a night. There are no amenities, but the view is amazing. 

Satisfied with our choice we head into town to look at the infamous Roswell NM. Area 51 and aliens! Let's go check it out.

Uh.... where are all the aliens? We've been to lots of touristy towns and the good ones get it right. Exploit the touristness just short of the point when it becomes too much and milk the crowds for all the money they can. Most towns do it quite well, and I must say make it worth the trip there to see it. Jackson Hole Wyoming: Awesome lodgy feel with tons of people. Gatlinburg TN: Smoky Mountain coolness. A great place to take the family for the weekend. Roswell NM: A few souvenir shops and a couple of alien figurines.

The best UFO looking attraction was McDonalds. That's really sad. Everything else was a middle school science fair poster type of feel.

Watch what direction you turn in town. With a mediocre population of 65,000 we were not expecting what lay three blocks from downtown. Home after home of boarded up windows and broken cars. The theme continued all the way across town as we made our way up the side streets. Loose dogs, stray cats, and trash littered the roadside. Even the gas station we stopped at looked like a dumpster tipped over last week and the wind blew it all over the lot. It's such a shame. They have a golden opportunity to turn this into a tourist mecca from the international fame that is Area 51. 

Deflated from over expectations we head home. Katie didn't share the same emotion that I did. She was more, meh..., and I was like; crushed of my alien filled hopes and dreams. Cruising back 26 miles to base camp took us past this old abandoned building on the side of the road.

It's mid-afternoon and much time is still to be killed. Eli gets taken for an off leash walk through the mountainous countryside. A legitimate fear is taking him somewhere we can't get him out. In the last two years I have had to pick him up with the Jeep twice. Random yelps of pain followed by him not wanting to walk more than a few steps. We don't know what it is or why it happens. A few days will pass and he gets back to normal like nothing happened. Descending into valley below the mesa is a risk. If he gets hurt here the only way to get him out is in my arms. It's a risk we'll take. Ninety-eight pounds of rotten lab still yearns to be free.

The time is now 1600 (ish) and Katie has had enough. I get it. I'm tired and sick of doing stuff too. That being said this is an OHV park designed for dirt bikes. Yep, this is going to happen. Another day of life on the road. Could be worse.