To Roswell and Beyond!

Caprock Canyons

This Texas State Park has so much red in the canyons you might think you’re in Colorado! You can drive or hike – plenty of areas to explore.

Some ancient Indian artifacts are on display, including this arrangement of Bison skull and many mandibles.

In the early 1800’s, North America was home to between 3o million and 60 million bison! Professional hide hunters began “The Great Slaughter” from 1874 to 1878, almost eliminating the whole number! Mary Ann Goodnight urged her husband to rescue some of the few that had missed extermination, and they grew that herd to over 200 head. That herd has grown, and is now the Texas State Bison Herd. They roam the Caprock Canyons, including the campgrounds.

A bit hard to see, there are six bison behind our motorhome on the lower right.

Here is a poster from the 1920’s encouraging people to “Cut Straight thru the heart” of the fertile South Plains…

Bison aren’t the only critters around; we saw several sharp looking Road Runners.

Adjoining the campground is a prairie dog village. Dozens of the little squeakers pop in and out of their holes.

Ending our time at Caprock with beautiful sunsets.

Roswell, New Mexico

The “Roswell Incident” occurred in 1947, when a whole host of folks say they saw a saucer-like craft crash land outside of town. Many people claimed to have picked up scraps of strange metal and other debris. When taken to the authorities, all the samples vanished, and were replaced with scraps of weather balloons. Many claim they were threatened with death if they told what happened that day. Some mysteriously disappeared.

Roswell is now a focal point for all things UFO… with the centerpiece perhaps being the “International UFO Museum.” (Should we be concerned about the U-Haul in front of the UFO Museum? Are U-Haul trucks really alien spacecraft in disguise?) (Just getting in the spirit of things here…)

Inside are scads of reports from those who saw or were involved in evaluating the wreckage. It’s enough to make you believe in the whole UFO thing, if you are the type to believe in it… whatever…

There are also lots of props from UFO or other science fiction movies.

This large exhibit played spooky music, flashed colorful lights, and blew fog from the spinning disk.

This is a replica of an ancient South American tomb lid. There is a legend that describes possible nav systems, braking and acceleration controls, oxygen system, and symbols for planets and space travel. The Mayans seemed to have it all figured out.

Big Blade!

If you ever want to make your motorhome feel like it’s not so long… watch one of these huge windmill blades going around a corner! Three blades, about six support cars blocking the highway intersection as they SLOWLY crept around the corner. These blades are about 120 feet long, making some corners very difficult. I’ve always wondered how fast the tips of these blades travel when in operation. Turns out at a typical 10 – 20 rpm, the tips speed along at about 120 mph, but in heavier winds may hit 180 mph! That explains the frequency of bird strikes… some studies say that wind turbines kill about 300,000 birds annually… but the same study says cats kill over 2,000,000,000! That’s two billion!

Faywood

Faywood Hot Springs in New Mexico has several fabulous soaking pools. It was a popular stage stop in the mid 1800’s, at time even sporting a 50 room hotel. It burned down, (Very Hot Springs?) and the site has gone through many more changes, resulting in a very rustic “back to nature” feel now. For privacy reasons I didn’t take pictures of the pools, but there were other interesting features. Below is a “Stone Circle”, which certainly won’t steal tourists away from Stonehenge, but is still interesting. I couldn’t find out about its origin – Native American or Cowboy?

Another puzzle is the Labyrinth, just a path spiraling around and around till it arrives at a rock in the center, where people have donated lots of little treasures. Or junk. No clue as to the origin or point of this feature either.

We had no Bison here, but there were a few crazy loud Peacocks. This one walked between our car and motorhome, and around the front. There is a mirror-like panel in the front of the motorhome, placed at just the right height for peacocks to admire themselves in. And boy did he! After a while there, he walked down the length of the coach looking at his reflection in the chrome trim strips at the bottom of all the storage doors.