Rosewell, NM

Last week, my friend, Josh, the Lorax and I took a day trip to Roswell. The town was the site of the 1947 alien autopsy. In 1995, Ray Santilli made a fake version of the alleged footage and sold it to broadcasting networks around the world. How do I know about Santilli when I was only five at the time the footage aired? Because Ant and Dec were in a movie about him. How else do I learn anything these days?

Roswell itself was pretty disappointing. I mean, I didn't expect much from it, but I at least expected some cool and amusing things at the UFO Museum. I was envisioning something like a children's science museum, but with "alien artifacts" and crazy people wearing antennae à la Muppets from Space.

Here's the Lorax outside of the UFO Museum. Notice the cryptic alien scrawls on the underside of the flying saucer above his head. 

The museum, it turned out, was kind of like a pre-school with no budget. And I'm not just talking about the fact that I'm pretty sure no one in there was actually literate. It was simply a big open room with various newspaper clippings, photographs and artwork pinned onto those cork board room divider things. And they charged us $5 for that.

To be fair, they charge because they're saving for a real state of the art museum. If that ever happens, I'll return, but not until then.

The museum included highly informative documents like the one above

As for the rest of the town... well, it reminded me a lot of Forks, Washington. Forks is the town where the Twilight series takes place. The actual town part consists of a three block strip of stores, restaurants and hotels. That's it. Seriously. There aren't even any other roads. Just the one. And every single establishment on that road is plastered with Edward Cullen photos, using Twilight as a means to boost visitors. Sadly, but truly, Twilight is the only thing Forks has going for it.

I spent all of ten minutes in Forks so I didn't take very many good photos

Roswell, though significantly larger than Forks, was the same story. Aliens were painted on every corner  and the street lamps were even made into alien heads like the Kiss street lamps in Hershey, PA.

click on the collage to see the images up close

Even though I knew I couldn't like go to the exact location where they found the alien, I had still been hoping something equally awesome would exist in Roswell. Maybe a tour of all the important locations during the autopsy. Or a museum that doesn't look like a storage unit. Or something.

At the very least, I can now say I've been to Roswell, which is something, right?

Also, because it is amazing, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kokm6ACqvB8