With the 75th Anniversary of the “Incident” at Rowell coming near I decided to plan a trip to see the festival the city put on. Brandon and Darren both volunteered to come along from Orlando and Andy from Dallas. We loaded up and headed for Dallas where the plan was to stay the night at Andy’s house before departing early to beat the often turbulent afternoon weather over New Mexico. After a car tour of Dallas going from the spot where JFK was shot to the Stockade in Ft. Worth we stopped for the evening before getting an early start on the quick hop to Carlsbad.
The FBO is Carlsbad was kind enough to lend us a crew car for the trip to the Caverns. They typically rent these cars but I assume because we were not the typical oil company employees who fly in they decided to cut us some slack. The Carlsbad Caverns are a short ride over from the airport and absolutely worth the effort. We opted to walk in and take the elevator out. The elevator ascends approximately 750 feet.
After the visit to the Carlsbad Caverns park we jumped into Skyscraper and flew to Roswell.
The festival was very well organized and well thought out. I would classify the event as two parts:
1. Small town America festival with an alien over-theme. – This festival had ample food vendors, lots of planned events, trinket vendors, etc. They had a concert, fire jugglers, drone show, 5k run, etc.
2. Serious UFO people at a conference – They had various rooms/halls with scheduled speakers in them. Approximately 4 or 5 rooms split between 2 or 3 locations with seating for between 40-100 people in each room.
We had a rental car so we had leisure to traverse the city end to end and as our hotel was on the north end of town it was necessary to have wheels at our disposal. Darren and I ran the 5k Saturday morning while Andy and Brandon got breakfast at Dennys. The festival portion was one of the best small town festivals I have ever attended. It was well run with lots of events for all ages. They had a reenactment of “the incident” that got booked well in advance but would have been fun to take in. We got tickets for a laser show at the Goddard Planetarium, watched the drone show, went in a few of the main street carnival type (permanent) exhibits, 2 of the conference events, and drove out into the desert to one of the alleged sites. On our last dinner in town we went to Billy Ray’s where we met Shirley, our server and long time Roswell resident. Shirley asked us if we knew about Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. She was almost annoyed that we came to town for the UFO event and knew nothing about the local history of Roswell. It seemed that in her eyes the local history had little to do with crashed space craft and little green men. I promised to checkout the Garrett monument at the courthouse before we left town. Promise made promise kept.
The following morning we loaded up in Skyscraper before blasting out for Dallas.
Good thing one of us was awake on the flight from Apopka to Mississippi.
Andy walking in at Grand Prairie to pick us up.
Entrance to Carlsbad Caverns.
The scale is not visible in this picture. Next time I go I am bringing a laser range finder to put size into the rooms.
Left base runway 17. The wind shifted 180 degrees before we landed and we had a little shear.
Lots of big hardware sitting on the field. A 777 went back into service and took off for Hawaii when we were departing at the end of the trip.
This is one of the two “welcome” signs we saw. This one was headed out from the airport going north to city center, the other on the north side of town.
Roswell International Museum and Research.
Drone show during the festival near the convention center.
An awesome logo that is all over the city. This one displayed by the drones.
Darren and I at the “Alien Chase” 5k. I ran 30 min 7 seconds having not run for (a few) years.
Brandon being Brandon!
An interesting float in the parade.
An artists perspective of a cow being abducted by a space ship.
My favorite float in the parade.
Even the street lights are branded.
Brandon, myself, and Andy at an alleged event site in the desert north of town.
McDonalds take on the theme.
Dunkin (Donuts) not to be outdone.
One of the (3) “lectures” we attended. This one in the North Library. While there were (7) speakers listed on the program, (9) lead the discussion.
Local food spot where we met Shirley.
Nice themed waffle at the hotel before the flight home.
The statue that Shirley made sure we promised to see before we left town.
Ex bomber hanger that swallowed Skyscraper whole. The hangar had a bump out for the nose to poke into with overhead cranes over the length to work on the wings and a hole in the door (just above Skyscraper’s windscreen) where the tail would poke out.
Karrie’s “medium” New Mexican red chilis, pride of the RV-10 baggage hold (from a roadside vendor).
Left crosswind from runway 21.
853 pounds of people.
17.3 hours round trip with engine running,
183.17 gallons of Avgas burned,
1.3 hours of IMC,
2,955 miles flown.
