Dietz Summer Road Trip

Woke up this morning ready to leave Carlsbad and drive up New Mexico. Our first stop along the way was Roswell, NM. We literally drove right through the town and since we were there we felt we had to stop. Neither of us believe hat we have been visited by aliens, but we do enjoy a good sci-fi flick. So apparently the thing to do in Roswell is to go to the International UFO Museum. $5, how bad could it be? It starts out with some background information about the 1947 crash In Roswell. (Which is celebrated every July with a huge festival that we missed by a few days…shame). So we are touring the museum and it is announced that there will be a “brief” 5 minute talk by this person who apparently is well-known in the UFO community. 5 minutes, what can it hurt, right?  About 20 of us sat there for this talk. It was obvious he was trying to sell a book or DVD or something. He talked a little bit about the museum and his research. After about 10 minutes it was opened up to questions and this is where it got weird. John and I were obviously the only 2 “skeptics” in the crowd that had not planned Roswell as our vacation destination. The questions from the audience were interesting, as was the speakers response. Here are some of our favorites:
“Is mankind not ready for the truth?”

“Who is “they” and why is the government hiding information?”

“Is it true they housed wreckage from the ’47 crash site at the Air Force base I was stationed at?”

“Can you tell me if this rock my friend found is extraterrestrial?”
Oh look at the time we gotta go. So we slipped out the back, took one look at each other and had no words to describe our fellow participants. We breezed through the rest of the museum and all but ran back to the truck.

We originally thought we would stop in Santa Fe, NM. But after looking at our route and our camp reservations for the night we decided to go to Albuquerque instead.  It was a easy, flat drive there.  As we approached, it was an endless amount of Breaking Bad references and every RV we saw was automatically determined a Meth lab.

We decided to go to a place called Kelly’s Brewpub for lunch. It is a micro-brewery/ pub located in the Knob Hill district of Albuquerque very close to the University of New Mexico. Kelly’s is located in an old Ford Dealership/ garage. It was a really neat place with great food and even better brews. We shared Sriracha Chicken Wontons as an appetizer. For lunch it was Grilled ham and cheese and Green Chile Chicken Soup. Side Note about Green Chile Chicken Soup if you have never had it. It is a cream based soup, like a baked potato soup constancy. It has shredded chicken and green chiles. We had Green Chile Queso dip when we were in Amarillo, TX a few years ago. We have never had anything like it since and Danielle was determined to get it, or something similar on the trip. This soup was was, spicy from the chiles, creamy, almost like a Chicken Tortilla soup but better. Maybe because we don’t have anything like it back home. All of the food was very tasty. They sold $6- 6 packs which was a deal we would have been crazy to pass up. We enjoyed our lunch, nice weather, and beverages.

  

We then drove to the other side of Albuquerque to Petroglyph National Monument. Driving around Albuquerque it was cool to see how businesses, the college, and houses kept a lot of the architecture the same with Adobe colored/shaped buildings, it all looked very South Western as we imagined it would. After about 20 mins and just a few wrong turns we got to the Peteoglyphs. It is a collection of petroglyphs along a few trails, some of which date pretty far back. We hiked up Boca Negra Canyon and got a great view of Albuquerque, the Sandias Mountains and the Rio Grande River Valley. The road through the canyon closes at 5pm so we headed back to the truck and north towards our campground.

  
We planned to stay at Fenton Lake State Park in Jemez Springs, NM. It was about 1 hour 45 mins northwest of Albuquerque. It will put us en route to Mesa Verse for tomorrow’s drive. The drive there was through the Jemez Pueblo Reservation Land and the Jemez National forest. Fenton Lake was located just beyond and we rolled in with plenty of daylight left. We found our campsite, got settled and were determined to have a camp fire. Found out there were no showers (good thing blogs don’t have a sense of smell). We cooked some rice and started that fire! There was no rain, no ER trips and no problems!! Finally a successful night of camping!

New Mexico was awesome, full of caverns, flat land, and beautiful south western mountains. We got a sweet bumper sticker for the truck and a good nights sleep. Looking forward to finally getting to Colorado and staying in one place for a few days! #roadtrippindietz