Tacky Road Trip or "Aliens be Afraid, be Very Afraid"

Hey Aliens, you'd better watch out, the Boat House is coming and you need to be afraid, be very afraid!

The year my grandson John graduated from high school we invited him to come and visit Ron and I in New Mexico.  My son Ryan drove down from Denver to join us on this wonderful journey so we would have a merry group in our rental car.

Thus began the saga of "tacky road trip".  Our primary destination would be Carlsbad Caverns in Southern NM, but oh the sights we would see on the journey between Santa Fe and Carlsbad, lots of cactus, deer, antelope, fields of chiles growing in abundance, mountains to explore, apples to buy from the orchids on the side of the road, "Christmas" chile on our enchiladas (green and red).

The "secret" stop Ron and I had planned for this trip was to be Roswell, NM, the home of a purported UFO crash in the 1940's.  After all, we worked at a National Laboratory north of Santa Fe where those aliens from that UFO were rumored to be held.  I personally never saw an alien there, at least I don't think I did, but you never know for sure, do you?  Now, you have to remember, a lot of our co-workers and colleagues had very different accents, and some looked and acted a tad strange, even to two people who had lived on the West coast in our younger years, where we had more than our share of strange people.

John and Ryan both groaned when we pulled into the dusty little town, UFO signs and pictures of alien museums abounded, everything a lover of "The X Files" would go crazy over.  As an aside, I think it's interesting that we ended up moving to the same part of the U.S. as "the smoking man" from the X Files.  We feel very safe here in Birch Bay, because I'm sure, with "the smoking man" living here the aliens surely won't follow.

Anyway, I digress, the first thing we did after pulling into Roswell was to find the tackiest rubber alien statue outside of one of the many museums on the main drag.  "John and Ryan, I want to take your picture next to him/her/it."   Ron immediately pulled into the nearest parking place ahead of a little old lady who was vying for the same spot.  John groaned, "you guys don't seriously believe in this stuff, do you?"  "Well, we'll just have to see" I replied, again,  after all "you never know".

After paying a small entrance fee (probably for buying alien food) Ron and I pulled our reluctant grandson and son in through the double front doors.  Ron and I went in eagerly, anxious to see all of the amazing out of our world stuff,  John kind of hung his head and looked around to make sure there were no girls watching him go into such a place, and  Ryan was now kind of getting the idea and a spark of interest was starting to grow in him.

"Look John and Ryan" I said, old photos of the Alien autopsy, "what color do you think their blood is?", I can't tell because these photos are all black and white, "maybe their blood is actually black and white." Another louder groan, "oh grandma, pleeze!"

After touring all of the sights, and touching all of this alien stuff (would this be the cause of later health issues in Ron and I, or were we just destined to get older like everyone else?)  But, once again I digress, as we walked around looking at the photos on the last wall I let out a loud gasp, "Ron, Ron, come and look at this, this is amazing!"  There on the wall was a photo of one of my co-workers, someone I used to car pool with.  Maybe there was some truth to the rumors of Aliens stored where we worked after all.  It turned out that my co-worker was shown testing something found in a Roswell field that turned out to be a piece of jewelry (or so say they say).

Anyway, after a great lunch in a local restaurant, Christmas on our enchiladas, off we went to Carlsbad, and a more normal part of our "Tacky Road Trip".

As to the aliens.........(you never know)