NEW MEXICO: ROSWELL

June 30, 2021

We spent the night at a Super 8 in Las Vegas (New Mexico), a quirky hotel in a quirky little town. I loved the peacock decoration that was part of the hotel landscaping.

However, Las Vegas didn't hold a candle to the quirkiness of our next destination: Roswell, New Mexico, home of the [in]famous July 1947 "Roswell UFO Incident." The basic story is that a "flying disc" crashed at a ranch about 75 miles from Roswell and was reported to authorities by the Roswell Army Air Field. However, the Army quickly retracted the statement, saying that it was actually a plain ol' weather balloon that crashed. 

Things were quiet until the late 1970s when a retired military man exposed the "cover-up" to a UFOlogist, or a researcher of UFO sightings. Many more "eyewitnesses" soon came out of the woodwork, including several who said that at least one alien spacecraft had crash-landed and bodies had been recovered by the military.

In 1994, the US Air Force came out with a report stating that the crashed object was a nuclear test surveillance balloon, and in 1997 they added that the recovered "alien bodies" were probably test dummies that had been dropped from high altitude.

What I can gather is this: 1) Something crashed into a field 75 miles outside Roswell in July 1947; 2) There was some kind of cover-up, although whether it was because it was a nuclear-related device or a UFO can be debated; 3) There are a lot of crazy people out there; 4) Roswell makes a big chunk of money off its UFO/alien image. As for #4, why else would we have gone to Roswell, except perhaps as a bathroom stop on our way to Carlsbad Caverns? 

As soon as you hit the edge of Roswell's business district, there is no question what the big draw is.

EGYPT: VALLEY OF THE KINGS, ALABASTER SHOPPING, AND THE AMENHOTEP III TEMPLE

Archaeology + Egypt = King Tut's Tomb, right? It just wouldn't be right to go to Egypt without visiting King Tut's tomb!

It doesn't take long to travel from Luxor (anciently was known as Thebes) in the verdant Nile Valley to the parched western desert where lies the Valley of Kings, a burial ground for at least sixty-three of Egypt's Most Important People from the 16th to the 11th century BC.

As we drove down the highway, we saw a lot of what appeared to be archaeological activity:

Perhaps one of these is the next King Tut's tomb:

We could see stone stairways, stone walls, and mysterious square doorways that lead to who knows where:

Way up on top of a hill, overlooking this Archaeology Heaven, sits the home of Howard Carter, the British Egyptologist who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. He had spent the years between 1907-1914 and 1917-1922 looking for it. It turned out to be the most intact and best-preserved Egyptian tomb ever found. (More about that later.)

Carter's home has recently been turned into a museum, complete with a replica of King Tut's tomb off to one side. Yet another place we'll have to see on our next trip. It's impossible to see everything on a single visit!

One of our biggest disappointments of our visit to Egypt was that no photography was allowed within the Valley of the Kings gates. We couldn't even take pictures of the rocks and tomb entrances. I can understand why cameras are forbidden in the tombs themselves, but I don't get why exterior photos can't be taken. Maybe once people start taking pictures, it's just too hard to control.

Some pictures are available on the internet, but not as many as one would expect. I'll share a few of the ones I found.