The standard check out time at RV parks is 11am, but we’re yet to master the art of packing up quickly, particularly when it comes to cleaning up our sewer pipes, filling up our fresh water tanks, and putting all the plumbing stuff away. Lisette reckons Michael is very efficient, but we still underestimate how long we need to give ourselves!
From the RV park, we drove into Roswell, heading over to a grocery store first. It’s getting to Easter, so Michael got his annual Cadbury creme egg fix, while Lisette tried a can of dulce de leche-flavored horchata which was way too sweet (but hey, gotta try local products)!
Roswell capitalizes on being a tourist town, as it was the site of an infamous UFO crash on July 2, 1947 that has been subject to a ton of conspiracy theories about what really happened that day–and which the US government has apparently been covering up since then. Apparently, many people witnessed what happened, and from the smoldering wreckage of the UFO there were 5 aliens inside, with only 1 survivor.
Roswell has so many alien-themed sites around–from the alien mannequin outside UFO Fizz, a soda and candy store, to the rocketship structure in the local park, to the lampposts with alien heads fashioned on top. We checked out the UFO Spacewalk, which takes you through a blacklight adventure through an alien spaceship. It costs $6 per person and while it’s uber kitschy to do the brief walk through, it’s rather funny, and we even were able to take Sheila through with us (although she did get startled like us to hear some of the “alien” sounds as we stepped through the black curtain).
International UFO Museum and Research Center
One of the main attractions at Roswell is the International UFO Museum and Research Center, where even extraterrestrial skeptics could become convinced that we are not alone in the universe. It’s an extensive museum that delves further into what happened at Roswell that fateful UFO crash day, other first-hand witness accounts about UFO and alien sightings or close encounters, and how pop culture has also embraced all things extraterrestrial. What was fascinating to see was that alien life seemed to be documented as early as the Mayan era, well over a thousand years ago. Besides the museum, there’s a working library where you can borrow books to learn more about these topics.
The Craziest Dust Storm (Haboob) We Lived To Write About
While we were inside the Museum, we received an emergency alert on our phones about a severe dust storm, which we didn’t stress about too much about as we’d received one before already in New Mexico (our first night here crossing from Arizona). Upon exiting the Museum, however, we were shocked to see how the day had dramatically shifted. We’d gone from sunny warm weather to grey skies, and people walking and shielding their faces from the dust billowing up in front of them. We were starving, so we got to the RV and Lisette immediately dug into a packaged salad, which turned out to be rotten (it’d been sitting in the bottom drawer, and we hadn’t realized that it had expired 4 days ago). She was so hungry that she ate half of it!
To hopefully balance out her hungry and potentially upset stomach, we went to McDonald’s, which is a tourist attraction because it’s shaped like a UFO and has alien sculptures at the front. Lisette doesn’t really eat McDonald’s but had her first Filet-o-Fish since she was a child, and it actually looked like the picture on the menu! (Although it’s smaller than she remembers–shrinkflation is real).
Our plan was to drive to Albuquerque, but the dust storm became even more intense as we drove along. At some points we had virtually no visibility as we drove straight into the wall of dust in front of us, while the wind rattled our RV uncontrollably, which was incredibly scary. We had no choice but to park at a rest stop for about an hour, joining other folks who were also sitting in their cars waiting out the dust storm. The wind was so strong that Michael had to get out of the car to help a man using TWO walking canes, struggling to stay upright as he tried to get back to his car. Random trivia: In the Southwest, this type of dust storm is called a “haboob”, which is a specific type of dust storm, when giant walls of dust are created from high winds rushing out of a collapsing thunderstorm.
Eventually we decided to get back on the road, so that we would find our camp spot before dark as it was already around 4pm. We weren’t long on the road, before we saw a truck that had skid off the opposite side of the road and was now in a ditch. Then we saw a car and caravan flipped upside down into a ditch with several cars stopped so that people could help the folks trapped inside. Scary and not reassuring…
We continued to receive emergency alerts on our phone along the way, alerting us that Highway 54 was closed, more dust storm alerts, etc. The sun was due to set around 7pm, but there weren’t any rest stops that we could see, and the only one we planned to stop at was closed (and on the side of the blustering highway). We had no choice but to keep going toward a town called Moriarty, about 30 minutes outside of Albuquerque.
But before we arrived, we saw the entire sky turn black with threatening storm clouds, and lightning in the distance. Then sleet started to come down heavily! We’d gone from a top of 26 degrees Celsius (78 Fahrenheit) to -2 Celsius (28 Fahrenheit), with a wind chill of -13 degrees Celsius (8 Fahrenheit) in half a day! Just after sunset, we made it to a trucker travel stop. While it was freezing, we were grateful that the thick and extreme dust, wind, rain, and snow had abated, and we just had to deal with the bad air quality! Lisette cooked dinner (Kung Pao tofu) as we quelled our nerves, and rested from the day’s wild adventures.
Route Map
