Winter Break road trip episode 3: Roswell, NM

At the end of the second episode, Winter Break road trip episode 2: Alamogordo to Carlsbad Caverns, your intrepid blogger had survived a trip 800 feet beneath the surface of the earth. Your intrepid blogger emerged like Persephone in the spring to continue her desert odyssey with a search for alien life forms. Translated from pompous-ese (the native tongue of academics like me), hubs and I drove from Carlsbad to Roswell.

For those of you who don’t watch cheesy shows about UFOs, Roswell is the site of a rather famous crash. What crashed, you ask? According to the US Air Force, a weather balloon. But spoiler alert: you don’t see little statues of weather balloons in Roswell. Instead, you see these:

Bonus points if you can pick out which one of those beings is the alien.

Whether or not they actually crash landed outside Roswell back in 1947, those little green men have been mighty good for the Roswellian economy. You can’t walk ten feet in downtown Roswell without tripping over at least one of ‘em.

Even the city itself has embraced the town’s extraterrestrial legacy. Behold the lamp posts, complete with Santa hats for Christmas:

So did aliens really crash land outside Roswell back in the 1940s? No clue. But if they did, they could make a fortune taking selfies with tourists.