As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Roswell was the only place on hubs’ New Mexico bucket list.

Sadly, the small city itself wasn’t anything like what he had pictured. Instead of a modern city of over 48,000 people, he was expecting an older and smaller town with more of a rural vibe (think black and white 1950’s films).

Main Street was extremely kitschy and touristy with some type of an alien statue gracing the front of many businesses.

After the previous afternoon’s drive around town, hubs was so disappointed that he wanted to leave town as soon as we’d had our breakfast. I suggested that we were there anyways and would likely never be back, so we should at least check out the International UFO Museum and Research Center. From the pamphlets we had picked up, this seemed to be the only place that might have things related to the actual 1947 incident that made Roswell famous.

The admission was only $5 each, so what could we lose besides an hour or so?

As you enter the museum, there’s a large area to the right that houses the research library.

Cases upon cases of documents are available to peruse

The walls outside of the library are lined with photos and newspaper articles related to the long ago “Roswell crash”.

The museum is adjacent to the library, and as soon as you enter, there’s an immediate photo opp.

Can you spot the real alien(s) ?

The rest of the museum is filled with replicas of artifacts, and lots of touristy stuff, inclusive of a little walk-in virtual reality light show that tries to reproduce what the aliens may have experienced as their craft was crashing to the earth.

There was a section dedicated to ancient cave drawings that many believe depict visitors from another planet

There was also an area dedicated to NASA and our own space exploration, which hubs sort of took an interest in. I suggested to him that his main issue with all of this was likely his keen interest in the Roswell incident and anything space related. He’s read so much and watched so many programs about these things, that it’s almost an impossibility for him to learn anything new.

Maybe we’re the aliens out there

If you’re a “Trekky”, or you’re married to one, and you hope to visit Roswell some day, my suggestion is to keep your expectations grounded. I had fun and learned some new things, but even after the museum, hubs still felt let down with the overall Roswell experience.

Photo Note: Information posters are among the most difficult things for me to correct in post processing. Their perspective is almost always skewed, so I find myself doing a lot of work with the crop tool in my native photos app, as well as the perspective tool in Snapseed. Sometimes it comes together quickly and other times, I give up in frustration. The latter was the case of the photo above about PFC Harry Girrard. Sometimes, you just need to decide how much time you’re willing to spend on editing.

“If the government is covering up knowledge of aliens, they are doing a better job of it than they do at anything else.”

Stephen Hawking