Gas Prices
I’m curious about gas prices. Of course, gas prices in Utah are ridiculously high. When I got down into New Mexico, I actually almost ran out of gas. I got off of I-40 and went south toward Roswell on a big four-lane divided highway, not a freeway, but divided, and I had maybe half a tank of gas. I drove miles and miles and miles and never went through a town and never saw a gas station. I was getting to about a quarter of a tank and was getting worried. I finally came to a little town in the middle of nowhere with one gas station. Gas there was $2.79 (and I filled up). Later I got to a town called Artesia, which is south of Roswell, and it’s actually an oil-refining town. Gas there was $2.99. Why is it that in the oil-refining towns gas is more than way out in the middle of nowhere?
Rattlesnakes (NM)
I did a U-turn at a rest stop before Roswell, probably about where, no, I think Gene (see below) told me that there's one alien crash near the highway that goes from Santa Rosa to Roswell and it's about halfway between the rest stop and Roswell. So I was turning around at that rest stop and I noticed a sign that said, Truck Parking, and there was another sign under it that said, Beware of Rattlesnakes. I was thinking that if I had to go to the bathroom I would suddenly decide that I didn’t need to go that bad after all.
Aliens (Roswell, NM)
Were there aliens or not? Gene, at the souvenir shop in Roswell, says there were three crash sites. Aliens were attracted here because we (the U.S. government) were doing above-ground nuclear testing, and the nuclear bombs we set off were fusion, which is a nuclear explosion, and what stars do is nuclear fission, which is an implosion. So the aliens recognized the difference and were attracted to it (fusion), and they went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki first, but they realized that was just radiation left over, that there was nothing going on. So then they came over here and checked out White Sands and the three places where they were testing nuclear bombs in New Mexico. And some of those were just radiation. But then they went up north, where nuclear bombs were still being built, and that was hot. So they sent three ships, at least, to investigate. And because of the way the mountain ranges are situated—there’s a mountain range that goes north and south; I’m not sure if it’s the Guadalupe Mountains. Then there’s a piece of mountain near Roswell that goes east and west off of those. And that causes weird storms and extreme winds and so forth. I think it was on July 4, 1947, that these aliens came to investigate the nuclear whatever was going on here, and two of them got caught in the winds and crashed. Each of those spaceships had two beings aboard. And they died, supposedly, or supposably, as Gene said. The third one, which was out more on the west side; there were some archeologists doing a dig, and they were really ticked off because they had permission to dig there, and no one else did, and they found a camp site. They reported it and the police or someone came out to investigate and found that it was aliens and there was an intact spaceship. They chased down the aliens and caught them. All of the spaceship pieces—the debris from one crash site stretched over 20 miles, or 400 yards, I don’t know. All of this material got taken to someplace in New Mexico. Gene doesn't know if anything was taken to Area 51. It was taken up north in New Mexico. And Americans first claimed it wasn’t anything of theirs; it was the Russians or Germans or somebody spying on our nuclear activity. Anyway, they took all the pieces to the same place where they took other stuff, like pieces of MIGs, so they could do reverse engineering on them. If it was an American device that crashed, they would have taken it back to an Air Force base in the south part of New Mexico. But they took this to the north place, where they do foreign investigations, so the American claims afterward that this was an American weather balloon or something were false, because if it were American they would have taken it to a different base. Also, the ranchers and so forth around Roswell knew the difference between weather balloons and other stuff, because they were actually being paid $30 or something if they retrieved weather balloons and hauled them in to Roswell and gave them to the Air Force. Anyway, that’s Gene’s story, and he’s sticking to it.
Aliens Part Two (Roswell, NM)
So the alien that I saw, I’m not sure it was an alien, but I have my suspicions. It looked like the body of a sheep with the head of a cow, so I have my suspicions that it was an alien in earthly disguise.
Cactus to Carlsbad Caverns (NM)
Driving up to Carlsbad Caverns is a little canyon with a little stream, although there was no water in it when I was there. On either side, things were pretty green, green with a lot of cactus and bushes that were just as stiff and mean as the cactus. Everything that grew there was just ornery. Anyway, so I was taking a picture of a cactus, because they have pretty flowers. I kind of squatted to take a picture, and when I stood up I reached back and discovered I had a bunch of cactus spines sticking in the bum of my pants. Luckily they didn’t go all the way through, and luckily I found them before I got in the car.
Carlsbad Caverns (NM)
So, this is how they make you feel comfortable at Carlsbad Caverns: People wonder whether rocks fall off the ceilings and kill people. And the answer is, No, you don’t have to worry about it. Rocks hardly ever fall off the ceiling. For example, that great, big, ginormous rock in the center there that we call The Iceberg fell off of the ceiling. But that was a long time ago. And that doesn’t happen anymore. And see those things that look like sticks in the bottom of that little pool? Those are stalactites that fell off of the ceiling, we think probably during an earthquake. But don’t worry; we don’t have earthquakes anymore, and when we do, they’re usually pretty minor.
Green Algae (Carlsbad Caverns, NM)
The green color you seen in Carlsbad Caverns is algae that wouldn’t normally grow there, except the wavelength of the lights they use, the Park Service uses, happens to grow that type of algae. The other colors, the orange—the natural color is white, because most or all of the stalactites and stalagmites are gypsum, the same thing you make sheetrock out of. If there’s orange, it means there’s iron in it. The other colors are other elements.
Bats (Carlsbad Caverns, NM)
I wish I had a thermometer. Down here by Carlsbad Caverns, heading out toward Texas, it feels like about 90 degrees. The temperature inside the Caverns is a constant 53 degrees with 90 percent humidity. And I have to say, going into the Caverns, as you approach the main entrance, it stinks. There are bats in there. In fact, these caves are famous for the Carlsbad Bats. If I were here this evening, every night at 7:30 they have a program, they have a little pavilion set up, and they say hundreds of thousands of bats fly out every night in big clouds. They also said the guano, when people first found the caves in the 1920s they used to “mine” the guano and use it for fertilizer. It was 40-feet deep in places. When I was there swallows, called Carlsbad Swallows, were flying around the entrance. They migrate south and come back in February or March. They just fly around and around and eat insects. Inside the cave, in the water, they tested for bacteria, some guy did, deep in the cave where it’s completely black, and he found more bacteria there than they do in the water in the Amazon. They also said that around the caves there are more different species of wildlife than in many forests.
Carlsbad City (NM)
Carlsbad Caverns were pretty cool, but Carlsbad the city, I don’t care to stop there.
Carlsbad Pavement (NM)
The pavement on the roads in Carlsbad city is worn down, maybe because of the heat. The places that weren’t worn were where there was paint. So the dotted lines between the lanes are probably two inches taller than the pavement in the lanes.
Stinky Andrews (TX)
I’m just driving through a little town; I think it’s called Andrews. Man, this place stinks. Like raw oil right out of the ground.
H2Oil (TX)
I just passed a bunch of oil tanks. One of them had painted on the side in big block letters: H2Oil. What does that mean?
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