New Mexico

Carlsbad Caverns

I've wanted to see the Carlsbad Caverns for a long, long time. My parents never took me there as a kid, and none of my own travels had taken me close — until now.

The Carlsbad Caverns are way down in southeastern New Mexico, and, in my opinion, are a real gem of the National Park system — well presented, well preserved, well staffed. You follow a path that leads down, down, into the huge mouth of the cave, enter the cave, and gradually leave daylight behind. Ahead are the famous stalactites and stalagmites, softly lighted for your viewing pleasure. On and on you walk, with something new around each bend in the path. Finally you arrive at the Big Room, which really is big — a quarter of a mile from end to end, with a high ceiling — and it feels so astonishing to realize that you are there, seven hundred feet underground, in such an enormous cave filled with such amazing stone formations. When you've had enough amazement, they let you ride an elevator back up to the surface.

Roswell

Why did I visit Roswell? To see the UFO museum. You see, on a summer day back in 1947, something landed in the desert outside Roswell. A rancher found the wreckage, and brought people to see it. The local paper reported on the front page that a UFO had landed. The Air Force took charge, cordoned off the area, confiscated all the wreckage, and whisked it away for examination. The official announcement was that it was just a weather balloon that had crashed, but people who had seen the wreckage (and even handled it) said it didn't look like a weather balloon to them. Then everything about the investigation was classified Top Secret and anyone who had seen the wreckage was visited and sternly warned never to talk about it. No one has been able to pry loose any information from the government — even though it's been sixty years since it happened. So the big question remains: Why the secrecy? What did they find that they still can't release to the public? Roswell folks continue to believe that it really was a UFO, and folks everywhere else believe the "weather balloon" story and chuckle about the whole affair.

Alamogordo

White Sands is home to the Air Force's missile test range, where missiles have been launched since right after World War II, when captured German V2 rockets were shipped there for examination and testing. There's a nice space museum with lots of artifacts from the missile and space programs. A photo on display captures Dr. Werner von Braun at the moment of his surrender to the allies at the end of WWII, and he's relaxed and smiling. A full-size model of Sputnik, the size of a basketball, is pretty underwhelming today, although it was quite something in 1957, when Russia put it in orbit. (You remember, don't you? The Missile Gap, the Space Race?)

Feeling well rewarded for the time we'd spent in southern New Mexico, we wandered off toward Arizona.