I Was Nearly Abducted by Aliens

People who believe aliens find humans on lonely desert highways in the middle of the night and suck them up through a beam of light are up in the night. My encounter happened on a lonely desert highway in the middle of the day, and I wasn't sucked up in a beam of light. Rather I was lured like a rat to a baited trap.

If you were an alien, where would you look for subjects? Here's where I'd look, assuming I was out in the cosmos somewhere:

First I'd listen for life via radio wave transmissions, maybe similar to the ones surely emanating from the three major electricity transmission lines that spider out from the world's largest coal-fired power plant: the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) near Delta, Utah.

I might even try to communicate with the Cosmic Ray Observatory, which is 10 times more powerful than any previous such observatory and is funded by the Japanese government. It's also near Delta.

Next, I think I'd observe the fauna here and figure a way to blend in the way Native Americans used to dress in elk costumes to hide among the elk. If I happened to observe the area around the IPP and Delta, I'd learn that everyone drives a pickup truck, usually white, which pulls a horse trailer. Then I'd try to find a subject that is separated from the herd so as not to draw attention to the abduction.

I was driving along the Brush Highway, which passes the Brush Wellman plant, where beryllium is refined. Beryllium for the plant comes from North America's only beryllium mine, just a few miles west of where I took this picture. Beryllium is very lightweight and strong and is used in military equipment and rocket nozzles. The beryllium dust is very toxic, and I could smell it as I drove past the plant. I'm sure this metal would interest aliens with ships to repair.

On this very lonely road I passed only one other person, a guy in a camo shirt and driving a Jeep Cherokee. After I passed him, I stopped along the side of the road to take a picture, and he passed me. Then I passed him again. He was driving quite slowly. Then I stopped again, but even though we had crossed no roads, he never came by again. I even turned around and went back a couple miles to get a picture of an antelope I'd noticed, but I never saw the guy in the Jeep. He had just disappeared.

Exactly four miles past the IPP I crossed a cattle guard. Exactly four miles past the cattle guard was a dirt road going to the north. About a mile past the dirt road I noticed a white pickup truck with a small horse trailer stopped on the opposite side of the highway. As I approached, the truck's headlights flashed on and off. I slowed. I had brought a 9mm handgun just in case some weirdo jumped me, but it was unloaded in a backpack on the passenger floor. Pulling up to the truck I saw a young woman waving her hands out the driver's window, indicating that I should stop. I did.

She was alone in the cab. She said, "Do you know how to get to the hot springs?"

I said, "There are hot springs? I'm headed for Topaz Mountain."

She said, "Yes, they're over there by that volcano flow someplace. I'm supposed to meet someone there, but I can't find the road."

I said, "I have a map. Maybe that'll help."

We got out of our trucks and spread my Utah Travel Council North Central Utah map (the same one that shows Paul Bunyon's Wood Pile, which is also near the IPP and is not indicated by any highway signs) on the hood of the Tahoe.

She said the road was supposed to be between two cattle guards, and the hot springs were four miles up that road. I mentioned the road that went north four miles past the cattle guard.

She giggled and thanked me.

I continued on to Topaz Mountain, and I assumed she went back to the hot springs.

Now that I've had time to consider this incident, this is why I am sure she was an alien abductor disguised as a human:

1. Obviously, no human girl would flag down any stranger in the middle of the desert. They've seen movies.

2. The horse trailer was empty. Why would someone pull an empty horse trailer out to a hot spring? The answer is, they wouldn't. Clearly from their cosmic observatory the aliens had observed trucks pulling horse trailers and didn't realize an animal or a four wheeler should be inside.

3. While looking at the map I had told the girl I'd noticed a road that went to Sugarville. She said, "That's where I'm from." Right. And the door-to-door-magazine-selling teenagers who are trying to earn a college degree and a trip to Hawaii really live just a couple streets over. They say this just before they pile into the white passenger van with Colorado license plates and drive away. I don't think anyone lives in Sugarville. I'm not even sure it's a real place. Except for the lone sign on the deserted Brush Highway, I have never heard of Sugarville. The sign itself may have been an alien plant.

4. She had a chocolate lab barking in the back of the truck. Obvious prop.

Even though I'm a sucker for hot springs--soaking in natural hot springs is what I miss most about Japan--I think I was saved because I chose not to follow her to the hot springs, a likely trap.

Topaz Mountain is an interesting alien-like place itself. When I was here before I decided it was best to come right after a rain storm, when the topaz crystals have been washed and carried into the low areas, and they're easy to see glistening in the sun. Since it had been raining hard for two days, and I drove through a powerful wind and rain storm just before the IPP, and the sun had popped out, I was sure this was the perfect day. But when I turned onto the Topaz road, it was dusty and dry. Not a drop of rain had fallen here for some time. Everywhere but here. Weird.

Because there weren't a lot of glistening crystals lying around, I had to climb up a steep ravine and whack at the soft volcanic rhyolite with a rock hammer. I found a lot of rough topaz-rhyolite clumps but not many topaz keepers. These swirls in the rock are topaz-rhyolite clumps.

This is a clear or white piece I found. One of the alien girls on the mountain who was also looking for topaz or beryllium--I found some flakes of what I think was beryllium when I cracked a rock open--said the topaz bleaches from amber to white in the sun. This is what you can usually pick up off the ground after a rain storm. And this is the one I've chosen to install in my alien-contacting crystal radio.

I whacked this ruby-colored topaz out of a rock.

There are some pretty little flowers here in the spring.

Some bugs. And a lot of lizards, but the lizards are camera shy.

And used-to-be-juniper trees.

Okay. On the way back, I had to find the hot springs. They're exactly seven miles north of the Brush Highway on the dirt road. There was evidence alien ships had spent time here.

I donned some coveralls that I found in the back of the Tahoe and sat in this hot springs concrete tub for a while. It was very relaxing but maybe a bit too hot, as my ankles felt sunburned for the next few days. In the parking area by the hot springs was a white pickup truck with a large empty horse trailer and no one around. Weird. Another truck with a flatbed trailer sat empty nearby. Soon two young couples on four wheelers pulled up. They stood and drank beer and smoked cigarettes while I soaked. They paid no attention to me. I don't think they spoke Human. I decided they were waiting for me to pass out in the hot water, so I gathered my things and left, driving out the dirt road past the basalt lava flow, down the Brush Highway, and on to Delta. They never made eye contact with me. Weird

Driving through Lynndyl, I saw this Chevy wagon still sitting at the Sinclair gas and grill, where a burger costs $7.50. I understand some guy parked here when the car was brand new and offered to show a girl with a barking chocolate lab and an empty horse trailer how to get to the Baker Hot Springs.