Ride to Roswell, NM

We have been thinking about doing this ride for a while. Why a ride to Roswell, NM. Well we have been to Area 51, so we HAD to go to Roswell.

First a bit about Roswell: I would forget any pre-conceived ideas you have about the town. It is not some ghost town, or some sprawling city. It is an old town that survives on the “Roswell Incident”.  When you get into town, it looks like time is standing still 40 years ago. There is virtually nothing new. You get to Main St, everything is related to Aliens. You know, like little green men….or to be PC….little green persons. The old movie theater is the museum; all the shops that were once selling things that you needed are now selling alien related stuff. If you head south on main, it is all old Roswell. Head north on Main, well you are back in this decade. Chain food establishment, Walgreens, Target, 8 story hotels, at least a dozen, Wal-Mart, Sams Club. Just about everything you can imagine retail. There are car dealers. There was the only multi line Harley dealer I have ever seen. Harley, Honda, Kaw, Suzuki. They had old CZ, Hodaka, and a bunch of old bikes from the late 60’s and early 70’s on the upper level on display.

The folks were much slower paced and just kind of seemed lost like from a time around 40 years ago.

Now the place the alleged UFO crashed is not in Roswell, but around 50 miles outside of town…….The rancher that owns the property does not allow out of towners to be on his property any more. They have done too much damage. The reason why it is the Roswell Incident is because that is where the base was involved.

So if you are a UFO believer, or just want to check it out, it is a nice 3 day ride. Two days traveling one each way, one in town. Believe me; you don’t want to stay more than one day. Once you see the museum, walk down town, you are done.

THE RIDE,

We decided to stay off the freeway going there, so we went to Payson, across 260, to 60, into Eager and New Mexico. It got a little windy and chilly so we layered up a bit and continued on. Once you are out of AZ, there is not much of anything but rolling hills, some windmills, cattle, and occasionally a car. We went for miles and miles before even seeing a real structure. We stopped in Pie Town NM. Yup, Pie Town look it up. A booming metropolis with a general type store that was closed, and old gas station, and some other old buildings. Odd place. We stopped and took some pics and headed east. There is no fuel or food from Springerville, AZ to Magdalena, NM, around 130 miles. It got a little boring, but it was still nice to get away from it all. From Magdalena we continued on our journey to the land of Aliens.  A little bit of I-25 and back onto 2 lane blacktop. The sun was going down and of course, we are now on twisty dark roads with eyes looking at us. The type of eyes that if they jump out in front of you, well just don’t think about it. 

As we descended down the mountain, we hit a T in the road, Hwy 70. This was the main road into Roswell. (On our return trip, we traversed the same road we did in the dark, wow we sure did miss a lot in the dark….duh) This is a nice 4 lane divided hwy with sweeping turns, and other vehicles. It is still a very dark road. Would not want to have any problems as you are still in the middle of nowhere.  We saw the town lights up ahead, very deceiving; we were still many miles away. We found our hotel no problem, went looking for some dinner. It was around 9:30PM. Nothing opened except I-HOP. I will spare the details, but his place was so disorganized, I had pancakes for desert.

Our stay there was good. Found some kool places for dinner and lunch on Friday.

Our ride back….

We figured there were some wind advisories in the north, so we figured let’s just ziggy around, and pick up I-10 around Las Cruces. So we did. Once we hit I-10 head winds all the way. I could say it was a crappy ride back, but any ride you can return from safely is a good ride.  We had a great ride.

Just a side note, the guy I usually ride with Rick, rides a Honda ST1100 and I ride a 07 Superglide. It is funny how people react when we pull up somewhere. You can tell the by the look you get. Some guys snub me, some snub him. What everyone needs to remember, we all ride what fits us best, what we like. We don’t ride to please anyone but ourselves.

Ride safe, be defensive.

Da Grump