Wednesday, June 9th The Aliens are Attacking Abilene, TX to Roswell, NM then Roswell, NM to Santa Fe, NM

Today was such a long day.  We drove something like 8 hours from Abilene to Santa Fe with a short stop in Roswell for lunch and a visit to the UFO museum.  

So I have to admit that I was completely disappointed by the lack of an alien face on my burger at lunch.  I was totally expecting aliens everywhere - alien-themed restaurants and shops all over the place.  Alien-mania is not nearly as wide spread as I expected it to be.  In reality, there were 4 or 5 alien souvenir shops and a UFO museum along the main business street and that was about it.  

The UFO museum was alright - and very informative.  I think I was expecting lots of pictures and videos.  Not that they didn’t display those kinds of things, but they also had numerous newspaper articles and attempted to be as scientific as possible.  I seriously tried to suspend my disbelief, but I’m not exactly sure how successful I was.  I walked out with a very uneasy feeling about crop circles and maybe one or two doubts about the inexistence of “life out there.”

        

UFO Museum - The truth is out there!

Petting the aliens in front of the museum.

Anyways, we have arrived in Santa Fe and are planning on seeing the sites tomorrow.  I’m too tired and it’s too late to do anything tonight.

Tuesday, June 8th Fond College Memories Smithville, TX to Abilene, TX

We were supposed to leave early… but of course it didn’t happen.  I wanted to get further than Abilene on our first day - Abilene is only 4 ½ hours away.  But that didn’t happen and we ended up in a roach motel in North Abilene for the night.

I hadn’t been to Abilene since I graduated 6 years ago.  So before we saw anything else, we drove to the McMurry campus.  Walking around campus was a surreal experience.  Things had changed.  There were new professors’ names on the doors.  There was a new clock in the quad.  There were a couple of new buildings.  And all that had been the Indians was no longer.  A couple of years ago, the university gave up their mascot.  They had been the McMurry Indians since the beginning of the college in 1929.  But because of money and football and some other things I’m sure I’m not aware of, McMurry chose to have no mascot.  It’s a little sad really.  As far as I understand, the university is continuing to try to recover their Indian mascot.

After boring Greg with fond college memories (I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t that boring), we met up with a college buddy to reminisce some more.

One of the high points of the day was our visit to Redbud Park to see the prairie dogs.  Again, it was one of those fond memories from back in the day.  Greg absolutely loved the little guys (he’s fond of furry rodent things).

Cute little guys!

Cute little black tail prairie dogs

Gnawing on some grass.

Thus ends Day 1 of our half cross country adventure.

Road Trip 2010 Smithville, TX to Santa Clara, CA

This is a… retroactive blog for lack of a better term. Basically, we were without internet for the duration of the road trip and I was unable to post. So I’m posting now, a couple of days after our return. I will be posting once or twice a day (probably) until I catch up.

Canyon de Chelly, AZ