Day 15 - August 9, 2011
(Another "Welcome to" sign that was taken on our way OUT of the state and not into it. We never saw a Colorado sign on our way in, so this was taken on the New Mexico border. But as usual, in the interest of trying to keep things in order, I'm putting this picture before all of our Colorado pictures, even though it was taken after we left the state.)
(Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado - probably one of the coolest National Parks I've ever been to. Its ancient history (history circa 1100-1300AD) right in the United States. I tend to forget that that kind of stuff exists because the country itself is so young.)
(Mesa Verde is a place where the National Park service has preserved a bunch of ancient cliff dwellings. I can't remember the exact number offhand, but the park has about 7 or 8 dwellings that you can tour, plus some smaller ones that you can see, but aren't accessible to the public. This was fascinating to me because these dwellings were literally on the sides of cliffs. I can't even imagine how people climbed in and out of them on a daily basis without dying. Each dwelling functioned as its own town, and they were really interesting to see! Visitors could sign up for guided tours of certain dwellings or tour a couple of them on your own. We took a guided tour of the Long House dwelling - and this picture is of the sign explaining what Long House was.)
(The view from the Long House cliff dwelling)
(another view from Long House)
(Long House cliff dwelling)
(Long House cliff dwelling)
(ancient drawings on the cliff walls - this was pretty interesting to me because these are actual handprints. It just made it seem more "real" to me. I was able to imagine people actually living there when I saw their handprints that have been on the cliff's walls for about 800 years.)
(Thomas by some of the old paintings. This is one of my favorite pictures of him so I had to include it :-).)
(me in the Long House cliff dwelling)
(Long House cliff dwelling)
(This is the most famous cliff dwelling at Mesa Verde - known as Cliff Palace - because it is the most preserved. Its also the one that everyone wants to tour, so we weren't able to get last minute tickets to take a guided tour of it. This picture was taken from an overlook. I'm jealous of the tour group in the picture!)
(Welcome to New Mexico! The final state that I checked off of my list of "states I've never seen" on this trip.)Day 16 - August 10, 2011
(Roswell, New Mexico - since we were passing through the area, we couldn't resist the cheesiness of the town. We full advantage of the alien fun in the town.)
(Roswell's UFO Museum. I have to admit that Roswell is a very cheesy town. There are aliens everywhere to the point of it being funny and somewhat ridiculous. But this museum was actually really interesting. Its the one "serious" alien thing in the town. It tells the story about the actual Roswell crash, and the evidence and coverup that followed. I was interested in it because I never really knew the story of what happened here - other than the fact that something crashed in a farmer's field. This museum really gets you thinking though, because after looking at all of the evidence and reading all of the newspaper articles from the time, I'm actually pretty convinced that there really was an alien spaceship that crashed here....)
(inside the UFO museum)
(one of the many interesting facts in the museum that really make you question if the government is lying about what happened here...)
(more interesting facts about the coverup of the Roswell crash)
(a fun cartoon depicting the ridiculousness of the government's coverup. If you go to this museum and read all of the information, I'm honestly not sure how someone can think that this WASN'T a coverup of some kind. Maybe it wasn't really an alien spaceship that crashed, but something happened here that someone is trying very hard to coverup. It was all very interesting.)
(outside of the UFO museum. People leave their admittance stickers on the aliens outside when they leave.)
(Even the Coke machines in Roswell have aliens on them!)
(Alien Zone in Roswell - the place where one can fully embrace the cheesiness of the town....which we did.)
(Inside Alien Zone - they have scenes set up so that people can take pictures with aliens in the various different scenes. And yes, we stopped at Target for some random stuff and found $1 alien hats that we, of course, bought, to wear in the pictures we knew we'd be taking inside this Alien Zone place.)
(Thomas with an "illegal alien". I don't care who you are - you have to admit thats kind of funny.)
(eating lunch with an alien)
(Thomas in the outhouse with an alien)
(Motorcycle ride with an alien - this one was taken for my mom)
(Thomas, the pilot, piloting an alien spacecraft)
(beer with aliens)
(inside the UFO)
(Thomas fighting an alien)
(OK we're huge nerds obviously, but you kind of have to appreciate and laugh at the "ET phone home" scene here.)
(alien street lights in downtown Roswell)
(Even the McDonald's in Roswell is shaped like a UFO)
(Almost immediately after leaving Roswell, we saw our first sign that Texas wasn't far away. Not my happiest moment.)
(Goodbye to New Mexico and hello again to my least favorite state :-(. I loved the "hasta la vista" on the New Mexico sign though :-).)
(aaaannd...we're back...for 3 years.)
Day 17 - August 11, 2011
(Our last stop before making it to Corpus Christi, was the teeny tiny little town of Big Spring, Texas. My dad was in the Air Force years ago and this is where he and my mom lived for a few years. My mom LOVES Texas. She's actually pretty obsessed with it and her entire house is decorated in Texas/southwest style. She has talked about Big Spring for my entire life, but its a REALLY small town, thats even smaller now that the Air Force base there is now closed. I've never had a chance, or a reason to go to west Texas before, so since we were driving through west Texas, we decided to take a slight detour to check out Big Spring. I wanted to see the town that I had been hearing about for my entire life.)
(I promised my mom I would look for her old apartment building when we were in Big Spring, and this is what we found. A concrete slab and an empty lot where she used to live. The town is pretty much a functioning ghost town. Its almost empty, and very run down.)
(an old abandoned hospital across the street from where my mom's old apartment used to be. It was a pretty creepy building that was apparently still in use when she lived there.)
(This definitely isn't the clearest picture but we pulled over on the side of the interstate to quickly snap this. After almost 3 weeks of traveling, we finally made it back to Corpus Christi - my least favorite place on earth. This is the view that greets you as you drive into the city. Its an oil refinery. Beautiful huh? The people of Corpus Christi think so because they refer to this city as "The Sparkling City", which just amuses us to no end, because the only thing that sparkles is the oil refinery. And I'm not sure why that is something to brag about...)And that concludes our trip!
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