Aliens and Rockets

I have been in Roswell for five days and have done tourist stuff each day. At the downtown International UFO Museum there were lots of display items including a fun flying saucer/alien which made "landings" with smoke and eerie noises. But, the real focus of this museum was to profile the July, 1947 "event" during which a spacecraft crashed just north of Roswell. Officially it was a weather balloon but the locals I spoke to were less certain. Another visit was to the very handsome campus of the New Mexico Military Institute, NMMI, to visit the McBride Museum. During WW1 the school provided a mobile motorcycle group which operated four units

equipped with a 30 cal. machine gun. Although the school operates on a military basis, there is no official connection to any of the armed services. Admission is selective and offers both high school and junior college education. Some notable alumni include NFL quarterback Roger Stauback, TV news personalities Sam Donaldson and Chuck Roberts, and hoteliers Barron and Conrad Hilton. Another day I visited the Roswell Museum and Art Center which had lots of beautiful western art and displays of western/Native American history. A newly renovated planetarium is attached to the museum and day's performance was about "dark matter" followed by a stunning sky display. The gift shop attendant was a lovely, local lady who was a child when the "Roswell event" occurred. Her great grandfather, Lea, was once the largest land owner in Roswell and was instrumental in getting NMMI operational. And, her paternal grandfather, Dow, was a graduate of NMMI's first class and, of course, married into the Lea family. Naturally there is Lea Street, Lea County, and Lea Lake; and both Lea and Dow have buildings named after them on the campus. Robert H Goddard moved to Roswell in 1930 to pursue his rocketry interest eventually launching 34 rockets. The one on display in a re-created machine shop was launched in August, 1938 attained an altitude of 3294' and safely parachuted back for a soft landing. I also made short visit to the Walker Aviation Museum at the Roswell Airport; it profiles the Air Force Base which was located there during the mid-1900's. My last tourist stop was to the Bottomless Lakes State Park where a series of eight lakes, actually sinkholes, line up against a bluff. The water source is from mountains to the west; water percolates into the underground strata and migrates eastward until a low point is located; the largest lake, Lea Lake of course, is 90' deep and has a five million gallon daily flow.