Friday, 12 November 2021
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| today's route |
My doctor appointment wasn't until 9:15, but Google said the drive would take just over an hour, so I left the campground at 7:00, just in case. And in fact, it was nearly 8:30 when we got to the clinic, so I was glad we'd left early.
There was a very strong crosswind for the drive, and across this flat land there was nothing much to slow it down before it hit the RV, making driving a chore.
I saw lots of tumbleweed. Wikipedia says tumbleweed can be any of a number of plants that all have the characteristic of drying out when they get old and the plant detaches from the root, leaving this lightweight rounded thing at the mercy of the wind. And that's what they all look like.
I passed a historical marker that said there was a POW camp near Roswell during WWII. From mid-1942 until a few months after Germany surrendered, this camp housed up to 4,800 German POWs.
In a pen near a farmhouse, I saw a dozen long-haired goats, including at least one billy goat. I was amazed I could figure out what they were from the road.
I passed the Roswell International Air Center, which I hoped might get its name from the alleged UFO landings. But as far as I can tell, the "international" refers to Mexico, not Mars.
In Roswell, I passed the David Petroleum Corporation. I was curious and looked it up and learned it's an oil company based in Dallas with an office here in Roswell.
At the clinic
The doctor I saw was very patient but at a real disadvantage because of me just passing through town. With vague symptoms like mine - dizziness, headache, nausea - a number of things could be wrong with me.
He agreed it could be altitude sickness, and said he'd call in a prescription for medication I could take when I planned to go to high altitudes. (Which means a good part of NM and AZ, for starters.)
When I told him the recent refills of my blood pressure meds were from different manufacturers than I'd had before, he agreed that could be the cause and said he'd call in new prescriptions for those.
He also pointed out that the problem could be something wrong with my ears, and I mentioned I might just need new glasses. He said if the symptoms persisted, he recommended I get tests done on my brain, to be sure there's no swelling or other reactions that can occur from altitude sickness.
In Roswell
There's a CVS here in Roswell but not one in Alamogordo, where I intended to stay for the next few days. When I called them about the new prescriptions, they said it'd take a couple of hours, so I took the dogs back to the convention center where we'd walked a few days ago, and then I went to the UFO museum.
Roswell has decided to go all in for the alien motif, and various versions of green alien types are all over town. Even the Dunkin' Donuts sign was held up by a large green alien. They're everywhere. But you can't really blame them. They've got the military institute, a branch of Eastern New Mexico University, and a few smallish industries. But there are 47,000 people living here and it's not surprising they'd do what they can to attract tourists.
International UFO Museum & Research Center
I agreed to pay the $3 they charge seniors because I was, after all, in Roswell and figured I should see what they had. I'll say up front that I'm a skeptic on UFOs and especially on extra-terrestrial landings (if they can get this far from another solar system - or galaxy - then I expect them to be much more advanced than any of the accounts I've ever seen). But even with that caveat, I couldn't see that they had much here.
Much of the museum is founded on "The Roswell Incident" from 1947, which I knew almost nothing about. They had ex-ten-sive displays on the actual events and all the subsequent versions and accounts and conspiracy theories. Here's their short version of the incident:
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| read from right to left |
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| 2nd part of account |
As you can tell, this account strongly supports the conspiracy theory version.
I suggest you read at least some of Wikipedia's version of the incident before going any further. https://en.wikipedia.org/Roswell-incident Clearly a skeptic wrote this page.
Much of the "evidence" referred to in the Wikipedia article is displayed at the museum - the alien autopsy, for instance. The museum really does spend more than half its space on this incident.
And there are exhibits of other alleged UFO incidents that are also mentioned in the Wikipedia article - the Betty and Barney Hill Incident, for instance.
A nice young woman I met at the Carlsbad campground told me she and her child had visited this museum, and she said she hoped I liked to read, because about all they had was stuff to read. She was right. The museum hasn't got any alien artifacts to display so it has blown up accounts of the various allegations of alien encounters. It's entertaining, in a way.
But I found one of the best exhibits to be this:
I've never seen The X-Files so don't know if the description is accurate. But the "closed-loop logic" of conspiracy theorists this speaks of sounds pretty familiar in these days of stolen election beliefs.
For some reason I couldn't figure out, the last exhibit was this:
Before leaving town
We found a very nice neighborhood park where we could walk around for a bit, let the dogs stretch their legs. This seems to be a nice town, which I didn't expect, what with all the aliens and all.
The CVS, it turned out, had a different manufacturer for one of my blood pressure meds but not the other, so I got enough of the different one to fill out the month. I had to pay for them myself, as Medicare's position was they'd already supplied a month's worth of pills and if I didn't like them, that wasn't their problem.
But the CVS said it'd have to special order that high-altitude medicine the doctor prescribed, and I told them forget it, since I wouldn't be here to pick it up anyway. I told them I'd have a CVS elsewhere in the state call them for the prescription.
So we'll see if it was the change in this particular medicine that triggered these strange symptoms.
Back on the road
We headed west, and southwest, aiming for Alamogordo. I memorized how to spell this name because of it having the Alamo in it, a name I've known all my life. What I never knew was that "alamo" is Spanish for cottonwood, so the town's name means fat cottonwood.
At first I continued to see the rolling hills of yellow grass. Cows, horses. A sign saying "High Activity Deer Crossing Next 3 Miles." Gradually the road entered mountains and the Lincoln National Forest and became very scenic. I passed small communities like Riverside, Picacho, Tinnie, Hondo.
Hondo (population just over 1,000) is home to the Hondo Iris Farm, which is apparently well-known as a tourist attraction in season. And I saw a metal crafts shop with the sign: "Who Fires the First Shot," which I'm not sure I want to know more about. Also in Hondo is the turn to the Lincoln State Monument, up US-380 into the Capitan Mountains. I'd seen signs for this monument all over the region and finally looked it up. It wasn't at all what I'd expected.
The monument is, apparently, a big chunk of the town itself and preserves some of the original buildings from the town's founding in 1849, as well as memorializes a bloody chapter of its history from the 1870s. At that time, Lincoln County was the largest county in the US, and covered about a fourth of the NM Territory. And there was one general store that had a monopoly on supplying provisions to all the local folks, and unsurprisingly charged monopoly prices for them. Then a rival merchant moved in, opened another store, and nearly bankrupted the first one. A war ensued. And it was this war that made Billy the Kid's reputation, because he used his talents in support of the rival merchant. It's an incredible story, and I found 2 slightly conflicting versions of it. You can read them here https://www.legendsofamerica.com/lincoln-county-war and here https://allthatsinteresting.com/lincoln-county-war.
We had left Roswell at 3,573' elevation, and then came to the town of Glencoe, where a sign said they were at 6,000', so the road had clearly been climbing.
I came to the turn for the town of Ruidoso (all letters are pronounced in order - roo-ee-do-so - despite all Texans pronouncing it ree-uh-doh-sa). But on US-70 where I was, the big attraction was Ruidoso Downs racetrack and casino. I saw a number of other hotels and inns and spas, making it clear this area is a big draw. And I saw more casinos as I continued the drive. One of them was the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino, which I learned later is owned by the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
Then I saw the sign Apache Summit, 7,591', which meant I'd climbed 4,000' in the hour or so since I'd left Roswell. Not much farther along the road, I came to the town of Mescalero, the center of the tribal lands.
The road continued to drop down after we'd reached the summit, and I saw many signs warning of elk. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll get through all these states with all these signs warning of elk and never see an elk. I didn't see one today.
I came to the town of Tularosa, elevation 4,520' - a drop of 3,000' from the summit. This is where highways meet, and I joined US-54 a few miles from Alamogordo. I passed a pecan orchard and then came to a different kind of nut: the world's largest pistachio at Pistachioland.
It's 30' tall, took 5 yards of concrete and 35 gallons of paint. It was easily visible from the road but I didn't stop. That photo is from the internet. I was too tired, though I was tempted by the nearby McGinn's Pistachio Tree Ranch and Arena Blanca Winery Tasting Room and Gift Shop.
Fortunately we weren't far from the campground and arrived at 3:00. Even though only a few hours of the day had been spent driving, I was still tired enough to be glad to stop. And the dogs were ready for a walk.
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