No Abduction

I started off the day by heading up to Roswell, NM.  I expected to see all sorts of UFO related signs and buildings.  There are some references to aliens and spaceships, but really not that many. The UFO museum and research center were closed, so I didn't get to visit it.  Thought it might be kind of fun, and was intrigued by the "research center" aspect, especially since it was housed in an old movie theater.  From there, I headed east and towards the mountains.  Located another secondary road on the map and took off.  I've been burned a few times, but I normally far prefer these lesser traveled roads. The only real problem is that I don't think it is possible to maintain the posted speed limit when you rarely see any other traffic.  My reasoning for opening up the throttle on some of these roads, is why would you bother to set up a radar trap on a road that probably sees less than five vehicles per hour.  Of course, my reasoning on other subjects has been wrong on occasion, so I realize this hypothesis is not fool proof.

At the end of this road I came into Capitan, NM.  This is where the Smokey the Bear national historical park is.  Who knew there was such  a thing.  Aside from the small museum, there is a small outdoor garden area where the original Smokey is buried.  The museum was kind of interesting, and I am thinking that I am now the resident expert on Smokey amongst all of my friends. I paid my respects to Smokey and moved on.

My goal was to get to Silver City today.  I had chosen a road to get there and was pleased to see it was a designated scenic back road as I started off .  I think it probably was pretty scenic, but if I had taken the time to look, I,m pretty sure I would have gone over the side of the road.  I don't mind riding these type of roads, but I really need to focus while doing it.  Gotta tell you I would have hated to have been in  car.  You know it is probably going to be a pretty twisty road, when the posted speed limit is 10 mph.

At the tail end of this road (after things had straightened out a bit), you pass by this enormous open pit copper mine.  Looking at this mining operation is both fascinating and disturbing. I have to appreciate the technology and engineering that go into such a huge operation, but the result is so alien (I had to get that
word in somewhere in this post), to it's surroundings that it just doesn't seem real.

So tomorrow I'm off to see my brother and sister in law.  There is however an interesting road that I have to check out first on the way there.

Present Location:  Silver City, New Mexico

Today's Mileage:  403

Total Mileage:  2757

Today's photos:  Roswell's version of the chainsaw carved bear/some peaks in the Guadalupe Mtns/proof that I didn't make up that Smokey the Bear part/copper mine