Daily Narrative    The day began with 70 degree dry air wafting through the bus' screen window.  Theresa would like you to know that she couldn't be happier.  We rose slowly recovering from the previous days' early mornings.  Once we pulled together enough direction to get on the road, we headed for an education on what put Roswell on the map fifty years ago at the UFO Museum.  The UFO Museum is an enormous collection of didactic information, mostly detailing how our deceitful and manipulative government has conspired to keep the truth about aliens secret for decades.  A lot of thought has apparently gone into this, and the museum is a nice blend of heart felt message and entrepreneurial sales of all things alien.  The town of Roswell apparently shares part of this enthusiasm, aligning much of it's commerce along an alien theme.  After an hour or so of educating ourselves, we headed west for the day's second highlight, the post-mortem home of Smokey the Bear.  Capitan, New Mexico, was the small town in which the original Smokey was found orphaned in a tree after a forest fire in the early forties.  We visited his grave site and the Smokey the Bear Museum.  On the whole, a very pleasant rural tourist attraction and educational opportunity.  From Capitan we wove north toward Santa Fe, through that hot and empty country of highway 54 and then highway 285.  Just before reaching Santa Fe, we drove into what must have been the strongest winds of our trip and Theresa tacked the bus into the wind like a seasoned (although uneasy) pro.  We found the plaza in downtown Santa Fe and had an excellent Mexican dinner before discovering what you can actually pay for authentic native American art and crafts.  Santa Fe is notable for the fact that almost every building in this good sized town is built to look like an adobe pueblo building.  This ranges from apartment complexes, to corner Chevrons, to Office Max.  Theresa refers to it as faux adobe, Brian shortens this to fauxdobe.  It is a little odd, but also makes Santa Fe kind of nice to look at.  We found a nice campground about ten miles east of Santa Fe and checked in for the night.

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Daily Pictures

Morning in Roswell, NM	The famous International UFO Museum
A little alien/cowboy art, a hard to find genre	Turns out these are not UFOs
Roswell is very alien friendly and has many services aimed directly at alien needs	It wasn't open so we were unable to see how it differed from human shaved ice
It made us feel better to know someone was looking out for us as we bought souvenirs	Theresa and an actual alien car salesman
We'd like to have been at the assembly meeting where the signpost theme was adopted	From the odd to the reverent, the grave of Smokey the Bear
In case your Smokey knowledge is lacking	Central New Mexico is rural...
...a little mountainous...	...and not supporting commerce like it used to
In Santa Fe this is a hotel	This is a parking garage

This is actually an authentic vintage theater	And this is actually an authentic vintage church

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