Texico, New Mexico to the Roswell

Bouncing down dirt road towards Fort Sumner and the “real” grave of Billy the Kid the morning was far behind me.

The sun was directly overhead when I stepped out of the car into the hot New Mexican sun. There was no humidity in the air, it was just a good hot heat that lets you know exactly where you are. A museum stands in the middle of a dirt lot. Behind in the grave site. The museum charges a fee, and didn't seem to offer much. A small path leads you behind to the cemetery. Four or five plots sparsely populate the grass – Mr. The Kid's is obvious from first glance.

An iron cage contains two tombstones. The first, a large white stone which has deteriorated over the years stands prominently. But it's not the original. It was created in the early twentieth century. The smaller stone, in much better condition, proclaiming that, “he died as he lived,” is the original. And the reason for the cage.

The stone has been stolen and returned more than once over the years – and now stands protected. Well, kind of. The stone is close enough to the edge of the cage, and thin enough that anyone who really wanted to could still grab it with some effort. There's a lesson here – if you are famous or notorious get a bigger stone. Or – be happy that yours is one that warrants theft. There's something to that too.

Two hours out of the way, I had driven along roads – small and large – to see this stone. Some might wonder why. Do I even care about this person? Not really – I don't know that I'd have even known about him if not for the school project by Ted Theodor Logan, and William S Preston. Still – it's an important part of American culture and what's the point of being on a road trip if not to drive way off course to see one thing of little importance. The drive alone was worth it.

From the moment we entered New Mexico, crossing over at Farwell, Texas and Texico, New Mexico the country changed. We were no longer free in the country, but rather lost amongst the small towns that lined once great highways. It's strange to think of the power roads once had for determining community placement. It's the type of power that fast food chain, McDonald's now seems to wield. Most of the shops have long since closed down. There are more boarded up doors than open ones. The world is a blend of oranges and yellows and reds, except when it falls into darkness – the sun blotted out by the oppressive shadows of grain refineries – the only reason for the few thousand people still living here to stay.

One mile outside the town limits, green grass returned, a landscape unlike anything I'd seen since Africa. An hour passed along the one lane roads which split the ranches one from the other. The horizon was painted with red rock splitting the land from the sky; the view in the rear view mirror matched exactly what I saw before me. Two hundred kilometers without a gas station – the south west is no place to fool around. It wasn't until Sumner that we could replenish our dwindling supplies.

Waking up in Amarillo we made sure to fill our tank along 6th street – part of historical route 66. One time, the road to drive through the country, little authenticity still remains. What once was great, is now a ghost – and must be pieced together by travelling many streets, research required to make the journey that only a few decades back was the way to see this proud land.

Not all of Americana has abandoned the old route, however. Down on I-40 between exits 60 an 62 lies the Cadillac ranch. Even after the sun had set, last night, cars still pulled up. This morning, with the sun just rising into the sky, shadows stretching out across the barren field, there were dozens collected. Once the motorcycle club decided to move on down the road, the ranch cleared – but there would still be a continuous stream of people to check out the ten cars shoved into the ground, growing like brilliant flowers of all colours.

It's tradition to bring your own spray paint here. Everyone adds their own touch making the piece a constantly changing thing of beauty. Empty bottles an coloured caps litter the area, which leads to the question – who cleans up this area? Someone must otherwise the ten caddies would be buried in filth.

Girlfriends proclaim their love on the hoods of these beasts, while others simply splash the vibrancy around. Under the golden light of the low sun these testaments to the strength of Americana are things of beauty – but I couldn't stay forever. We were headed to Roswell New Mexico.

That was the plan, anyway – until the woman working the Texico information center pointed us out towards good ol' Billy. When we left there, hours were still required on the road. It's unfortunate that I feel the drive is beyond description, or were it to be described it would be so cliché as to take away from it. It has been one of the greatest drives I've ever had the luxury of undertaking.

Two hours – two gas station-less hours – and we entered Roswell. You'd have to be a fool to miss the fact that something had changed. It's one thing to not see the town line sign. It would be another to not notice the UFOs that cover the town. The local Wal-Mart is emblazoned with an extraterrestrial image. The loans centre has a ship on its sign. McDonald's is covered in images of space. Aliens fill shop windows, even if they're just music stores. The street lights are Martian faces. This type of nonsense I have not seen since the Dinosaur obsessed town of Drumheller Alberta.

First stop? The visitor centre to get our picture taken with little grey beings. Then down Main Street to the UFO museum and research centre. The admission is five dollars – and normally I'd not pay for the delight of coming here, but... I came to Roswell. Why was I here if not for this one museum?

Inside were sworn affidavits by witnesses and the family of witnesses. Information about UFOs around the world, and all sorts of pictures. There were a number of things worth seeing, but none that were presented any better than they would be on the internet. In fact, the gift shop sells Majestic hand books that have simply been downloaded and photocopied – and for this high quality piece they charge – twenty dollars.

But in a town with only one real thing making it stand out from the rest of the country they need to take advantage of whatever they could.

When you exit you can put your entrance sticker (that which lets you access the museum) on a metal space man. I can't imagine that this is a good thing to encourage though, as – if you know – you can just go grab one of the stickers from the street and walk on in. The only catch? They have different stickers for each day. But, just wait for someone to leave, and then all will be revealed.

Outside, back on the street, Coke machines have pictures of little green men drinking soda. and I have to wonder, do locals hate the aliens, love them, love them but pretend to hate them, or hate them while pretending to love them?

One last thing laid before us – taking the road out of town you could drive around the airport where old passenger jets lay discarded, chopped up for parts, and looking like something from a post apocalyptic era. Who knew there was more to this town than just downed space ships and ongoing tales of government conspiracies?

...There also happens to be a zoo here. A free zoo. But the less said about that, the better. It's one of those sad terrible places, where two mountain lions pace back and forth in a small cage, beside a bean wanting nothing more than to escape his small cell. Even the bald eagles, symbols of American freedom, find themselves caught, cramped, and contained. This is not a happy place – many of the visitors can be overheard remarking as such.

Texas: It's a Big State - a Day on the Road

Texas is not a small state. Not at all. If you want to get anywhere, say from Austin to Amarillo, you're in for a long haul. I started driving at eight thirty in the morning, and finally pulled into the motel parking lot at nine fifty at night. But I'm not complaining, I can hardly think of a better drive I've had.

Within minutes of leaving Austin behind the landscape changed. Sure, I saw ranches on side streets, and on route to touristy restaurants, but I still didn't feel like I'd seen Texas. Looking out along the 183, I knew I had arrived. The horizon stretched on, and small shrubs covered the land as far as could be seen. The road passed ranches – real ones, the type where you need to drive your four by four just to check your mail. This was what I had been led to believe Texas was, and as the morning sun cast a warming glow over the entire state, I couldn't think of a better place to be.

Listening to the radio – something we've done far too little of – the local airwaves provided the backdrop for our daily adventure. Katherine held the map of Texas in one hand, and a tourist book containing little paragraphs about even the most obscure towns in the other. Along the highway there was said to be a town hiding a hot springs near by. The passing water was called Sulfur River, and there were town banners reading, “we love our springs,” but there was nothing – no springs to be seen. Even the towns public pool was named after them, but if they exist, then they're hidden far too well for me.

We would have to leave the 183 for the 36 on our journey up to Abilene. The in two roads met in the small town of Rising Star. Texas has a number of great town names (Happy, Goodnight) but none struck me as much as Rising Star. I wanted to poke around, and see what there was to see, but with a population in the triple digits, this amounted to everything I could see from where I stood, and a small grocery store.

The store reminded me of those I'd seen in Africa, and half forgotten. A few can on the shelves, warm soda six packs aging away, and some local produce – it's age just as unknowable as anything else. This was America. This was the type of town where you'd be proud of your high school, and every one would know everything about everyone else. Thirty minutes down the road a supermarket existed, and life carried on, but here – in Rising Star – I allowed myself the fantasy of a simpler time.

An hour passed before we hit Abilene – the mid point on our journey to Amarillo. There seems to be a lot to see and do here, all things being relative of course, but we were just passing by. We wanted one thing to look at, and say, 'we were here.' The blurb mentioned something of an air force museum, listing an intersection. It took some trouble to find on the GPS, and even once we were there we could see no museum. There was one building, but the parking lot was covered in signs reading, “Military property: no unauthorized access.” I could only assume that I had said access as a museum patron – future one at least – and in I headed. I was only slightly afraid that someone was going to release the hounds on me, but when a long grey haired man stepped up an introduced himself as the resident hippy, everything seemed as if it would be alright.

The museum focused mainly on the B1 bomber, and the nuclear bombs it once carried. Today you can still see the test bombs, the engines, and a video made back in 1995 detailing the special features of the aircraft. This was made during the era that trading cards were being pumped out to support war, so – yes – it is as fantastic as you might expect, with a soundtrack that is a mix of Top Gun and those videos you used to watch back in grade ten science class.

But what stood out to me here was not anything about the modern day, or the pilot after whom the museum was named. What interested me more than anything else was the samurai sword and armour sitting unlabeled in a windowed case. I asked the origins of the piece but he (the hippie / curator of this small exhibit / former in air refueler pilot) didn't know. When he took over the artifact from the nineteenth century was hidden away in a box. It's presumed that they were stolen during the second world war. It's hard to imagine anyone willing giving away their samurai gear – and to think it was just hidden away until recently.

I would like to be in charge of a place like this – running it, setting it up. I would start by making a sign. Days pass with no one ever coming in. Weeks if the registry is to be believed. Then again, maybe I'd not make a sign. Maybe I'd just do my thing, so long as I could keep collecting pay cheques.

As we were about to leave we were told about Phantom Hill Fort. Twenty minutes outside of town along the 600 are the ruins of a calvary fort. It looks like a graveyard of chimneys now – all that remains from most of the wooden structures. One guard house still stands, somehow. There were also two buildings reinforced with brick. An old covered wagon, canvas top long since rotted away, sits on the field along with a canon.

This land is owned, and private, but a small car park exists, and you can open the gates and wander in freely.

There's one three things you need to watch out for. One – giant grass hoppers that want to make your hair their home. Two – terrifying spiders four inches square. Three – we were warned about rattle snakes, and told to stay on the path. Regular me would have ran through the grass looking for better shots, but warned and cautioned I did no such thing. The dirt path was my life blood. For added hilarity, the grass hoppers make a rattle sound when they jump.

Then it was back on the road once more, our big push to Amarillo. There were to options – the 84 to the 87, or the 83 to the 287. The first offered many small towns, such as Post (cereal anyone?) with penalty of safe gas station harbours. It was also a main highway straight on. The latter – not many places, mostly just hundreds of open miles. Barely a gas station is sight. The choice was obvious – we took the road less travelled by.

The land scape was even more beautiful than what we took in this morning. Now and then we'd pull off to the side of the road to stretch, or take a photo or two. On one such stop we saw dozens of tumbleweeds making their way from one side of the asphalt to the other. If I wasn't feeling it before, I definitely knew I was in Texas now. Cartoons have lied to me. It appears to be a little tree, more so than a circular ball.

Stopping on the side of the road is a fun thing to do – one lane of traffic each way, speeds of seventy miles an hour. But, it's hard to see everlasting blues meeting far reaching greens, and not want to stop. That is, after all, the point of a road trip – to get out every once in a while.

Our last diversion would be a small town which still has many a red brick road, first put in back in the 1920s. When we reached it it seemed like a big town, pop. 7364.

Amarillo let us know when we had arrived. There was no fooling with this one. Suddenly our open roads were replaced with dense highway, and the occasional power line breaking through the natural skyline was replaced with neon signs for all number of hotels, motels, and fast food of all sorts. It was a jarring kick back into reality, and an upsetting one – truth be told. It was uncomfortable being forced back into the consumeristic world that only a day ago had been my greatest friend. But now? Now I craved open road, big sky, and weeds that rolled along at their own pace. It's easy to understand why Texans are so proud of their state.

Now that we were here, it was time to check out the reason we'd detoured all this way – The Cadillac ranch. When we got there the sun had just set – the bigger red ball you'd ever seen descending down below city line. Pictures were taken, and some effects with long shutters and varying flashes were used. But, you know what? It was a bit too dark for perfect images. We'll have to return tomorrow.