Chile Not Chili

Almost every trip I take is an opportunity to explore some kind of regional food dishes. Over the past few years I've gorged myself on sausages in Germany, tacos in Mexico, pub food in England and cheese in Paris, just to name a few. But if there was a place I was dying to get a knife and fork in my hands to sample some local cuisine, it was New Mexico.

What is New Mexican food all about, you might ask. Well, at the risk of insulting countless current and ancestral New Mexicans, I'd describe it as traditional Mexican cuisine with a heavy dose of New Mexico chiles (typically Hatch chiles) thrown in for good measure. Yes, that description doesn't do it as much justice as it deserves, but it's a good baseline to start with. And if there's one type of food that speaks to my heart, it's Mexican food. It's the food of my inner soul, even though I have never lived in Mexico or the American southwest or really anywhere close to that part of the world. When I first started teaching myself to cook, that's what I started with because that's what I wanted more than anything else.

So what are we talking about here? Enchiladas? For sure; had a plate of those for lunch in Roswell. Tacos? Yep, those too; also had some of those in Roswell but for dinner. Chipotle mayo and roasted red peppers on a turkey sandwich? Uh huh; got that as a to go order from Millie's in Silver City before heading up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. But that's not what I came to New Mexico for. I didn't just want Mexican food. I wanted NEW Mexican food and I hoped departing from the Mexican baseline would give me what I came for. Here's what made me treasure my time in restaurants (and bars) in the Land of Enchantment.

Sopaipillas / Carne Adovado

Sopaipillas and carne adovado don't have to go together. I'm addressing them that way because I got these two kinds of New Mexican food in one spot less than an hour after we landed in Albuquerque.

Sopaipillas are eaten throughout Latin America. But each region, be it Peru or Chile or Argentina, treats the dish a little differently. In New Mexico, sopaipillas are pillow shaped and deep fried pastry dough pockets either stuffed with savory ingredients or drizzled with honey and eaten as a dessert. My sopaipilla lunch right after our landing earlier this month came stuffed with a chile and vinegar marinated pork known as carne adovado (adovado is Spanish for marinated). The pork was greasy and spicy and fall apart tender and stood up well to the fried pastry, which didn't absorb the grease it was fried in. I opted for the green chile smother, which I'd get as often as I could if I lived in New Mexico.

The spot we chose for our sopaipilla indoctrination was Mary and Tito's, a cafe in an industrial section of Albuquerque a few miles from the airport. When we got off the highway I honestly wondered what I had chosen to get myself into; there's little in that part of town that looks enticing to someone from out of town, which may exactly be the point. The food was great; I'd definitely go back for more here, including the Mexican wedding cake we had for dessert. If we needed any help thinking Mary and Tito's was a legit New Mexican spot, all that disappeared when we asked which type of chiles were milder (red or green) and they replied that the green were "lately." You only know that by tasting the chiles.

Chile Rellenos

The last time I was in New Mexico (in 2001), I had no idea what a chile relleno was until I asked at a restaurant in Santa Fe and had my first one. As a result of that experience, I will forever associate chile rellenos with New Mexico, even though they can be found and likely originated far south of there in Mexico. 

In case you need help here (because let's face it the picture above provides little), a chile relleno is a roasted and peeled chile stuffed with filling (typically cheese) and then battered and deep fried. With a light crisp batter and the right kind of chile, they can be sublime.

A little research on the internet about restaurants around Las Cruces yielded a chile relleno suggestion in Chope's Bar and Cafe, a joint (and I DO mean joint) in La Mesa just south of Las Cruces which has been serving up food (and plenty of drink when it was legal) since 1909. Chope's slogan is "Stuff It", a reference to their signature chile relleno dish made using Hatch chiles (instead of the traditional poblano chiles). Seemed like a great place to get the dish I was looking for.

If I wondered where I was headed when I was driving to Mary and Tito's, I really wondered where I was headed to get to Chope's. The 20 minute or so drive south from Las Cruces takes you down two lane unstriped roads over railroads and past field after field of pecan trees. When we finally arrived, we found a place that looked like it was barely holding itself together with a line of motorcycles out front and a parking lot full of pickup trucks. This was a local spot for sure.

I can pretty much guarantee if you head over to Chope's, you are likely to be the only out of towners in the place. I can also pretty much guarantee that you will be greeted warmly and served very well as we were. The place has atmosphere for sure; it was a slice of life we sometimes search high and low to find sometimes without success. I ordered my chile rellenos with the green chile smother (I told you...) and honestly struggled with the dish. I didn't get a whole lot of incredible flavor out of the dish and the batter seemed heavy. Can't always get what you want. Glad we went here; just wouldn't go back for the food.

New Mexican Beer

Like most or perhaps all of the rest of the United States, New Mexico is also caught up in a microbrewing frenzy. That's good for me and for the brewers who make it, but it sometimes offers a lot to focus on, so choosing wisely is of the essence. I tried to choose as judiciously as possible the four or five times I ran into the opportunity to knock back a local brew or two.

Of the stuff I sampled, I liked Sierra Blanca's Alien Amber and Imperial Stout quite a lot, especially when served in the truly excellent glasses with the alien head logo on them. Didn't make the beer taste better but there's something about drinking out of a glass with an alien head on it when in Roswell after a day of chasing the truth.

If you are in the old Mesilla in Las Cruces, I'd recommend a stop by NM Vintage where you can sample New Mexican beers and wines in a pretty cool courtyard. I grabbed some samples of Las Cruces Brewing's Pecan line of beers as well as a pretty good and sweet milk stout (pictured above) from Tractor Brewing (their website is getplowed.com; how awesome is that?).

But the best beer I had in New Mexico has to be the Double Wheat made by Albuquerque's Marble Brewery. This is unusual favorite for me since it's based on a Belgian style witte beer (complete with spices), although I've been known to have one or two of these that I go back to now and then. But whatever they've done to make this a double (Belgian dubbels are traditionally twice fermented, although describing a wheat beer as a dubbel would not be appropriate), it works. It took away any sort of wateriness and banana notes that I find Belgian wheats to sometimes have and left a crispness that was very nice. Two enthusiastic thumbs way up here.

Green Chile Cheeseburgers

If there's a dish that I associate more with the state of New Mexico than any other, it's the green chile cheeseburger so it's worth spending maybe a little extra typing on this one. The concept is pretty simple: a green chile cheeseburger is just what it sounds like, a cheeseburger with green chiles on it. What's so great about green chiles, you ask? Well, although I've made a couple of references to green chile smothers before in this post, I've reserved my description for this spot. At their best, what you get out of green chiles (which again are usually Hatch chiles) is a roasted, fruity flavor with some good lingering heat from the capsaicin in the chiles. And they are good with everything.

I may have had one dish of enchiladas, one dish of chile rellenos, one dish of tacos and one sopaipilla in New Mexico, but there was no way I was having just one green chile cheeseburger. You can get these things everywhere (even McDonald's although I didn't - on this trip). I figured finding a great one might be worth throwing caution regarding my gout issues to the wind and digging in and exploring.

I ended up eating three in the seven days I was in New Mexico: two beef and one bison. The most forgettable was at the St. Clair Winery Bistro in Las Cruces. The bison one, ordered and quickly consumed at the Buckhorn Saloon and Opera House in the almost ghost town of Pinos Altos just north of Silver City, was good but not as great as the place we ate in, a restored from long ago old west saloon shown in the photograph at the very bottom of this post. If there's a place I wish I'd lingered a little longer, it was here but the prospect of a long and very unlit drive home to Las Cruces got us out of there too early. Should have stayed in Silver City a night.

The third and final green chile cheeseburger we had was at Sparky's in Hatch, New Mexico, the town that invented the strain of chiles that makes these burgers famous. I've eaten a lot of burgers in my life. And if I've had a better one than I had a Sparky's, I can't remember it. This thing was incredible and it's worth probably a couple of paragraphs on this experience. This was for sure the best thing I ate earlier this month in the southwest.

We decided to visit Hatch on the last day we were in New Mexico after a morning of sightseeing right in the southwest corner of the state. I managed to mis-time our day's schedule so badly that by the time we rolled into the chile capital of New Mexico it was about 2:30 p.m. Late, but not super late for getting some mid-day grub. I had read that Sparky's was surrounded and/or covered by an assortment of fast food and cartoon related signage and statues so was a little apprehensive about finding something cheesy and touristy rather than local and genuine. All fear of that went out of the window when we arrived and found a 20-25 person deep line. At 2:30 in the afternoon. Probably a good sign.

So stomachs growling, we stood in line for about 30 minutes and ordered as soon as we were able. Two World Famous! Hatch Green Chile Cheeseburgers please. Have a seat and they'll bring them to you, which thankfully was a quick wait. We thought about the people exiting the restaurant while we were in line assuring us that the wait was worth it.

What arrived at our table were two sandwiches on ordinary looking hamburger buns with the sides (I went with the pineapple cole slaw) right in the same tray. The crust on the burger looked incredible and the extra juices that stay in the burger on a flat-top grill had seeped into the bread a little. This thing was so tasty. It was cooked perfectly and was everything I want out of a greasy hamburger. It didn't even need the cheese and ironically, the green chiles didn't (for me anyway) enhance the taste at all. This was a damn good burger. I'd go back in a heartbeat but my love of this sandwich overshadows the fact that our green chile cheeseburger quest produced nothing spectacular about the chiles themselves.

But ultimately, Sparky's redeemed our search for something delicious featuring green chiles. Not in their "Best Green Chile Cheeseburger in NM" but in the drink I ordered with it: a green chile lemonade.

Sound disgusting? I can see why you might think that. After all, not everyone wants pieces of soggy roasted and peeled green chiles in their lemonade. But here's the deal. First the heat of the chiles which is real and right up front is complemented beautifully by the sweetness and sour of the lemonade. And because the whole thing is shaken vigorously with a generous amount of ice, the chile bits are actually seriously chilled or maybe a little frozen. The result is a little bit of literal chew to your beverage which keeps that heat going. I loved this beverage. I'd love to have another one with one of those amazing burgers on the side right now!

Our New Mexico food quest started at Mary and Tito's and ended at Sparky's. I'd have to say those two places served us some of the best food we ate in the almost week we were in the state. There were some misses (aren't there always) and some hits but ultimately I'm left wanting more. I'm hoping I can have less time between visits this time around. I'm not sure I can go another 16 years before a return trip.

The Buckhorn Saloon and Opera House. Should have stayed closer to this place.

Out Of Darkness

There are 59 National Parks in the United States. And by that I mean true National Parks with full status, not National Monuments or properties under the care of the National Park Service. Of those 59, three are caves. I visited one of these, Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, on a bourbon and music tour of Tennessee and Kentucky back in 2006 which I sometimes refer to as my camera-less vacation because I think it's the only significant trip I've taken without a camera since I got out of school in 1994. I managed to visit another this month: Carlsbad Caverns National Park just outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Carlsbad Caverns had been on my non-existent bucket list for a while, probably ever since I took a trip to northern New Mexico in 2001 and became determined to do the southern half of the state in a subsequent trip. Sometimes these things take a while to come together; 16 years in this case as it turns out. Better late than never.

That '06 trip to Mammoth Cave got me a little bit inside the largest cave system discovered so far in the world, with a total of 400 miles of passageways documented to date. Carlsbad Caverns would be a little different. It is nowhere near as big but features one of the largest underground rooms ever discovered, appropriately nicknamed The Big Room which is almost 4,000 feet long; that's over 3/4 of a mile long if you thought about doing the math. 

The other famous draw of Carlsbad Caverns is the daily dusk departure of hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats on their nightly hunt. But they are migratory and only live in New Mexico in the summer months. I visited in winter. The Big Room would likely have to suffice for this trip. I was excited to explore nonetheless.

Foreshadowing...

Carlsbad Caverns were granted National Monument status in 1923 after being surveyed by Robert Holley of the General Land Office. Accompanying Holley on that survey were photographer Ray V. Davis, whose photographs of the Caverns published earlier that year in the New York Times had brought national attention to the site, and Jim White, who was according to legend or myth or actually written history the first (white) person to enter the Caverns.

One year later an expedition featuring White was sponsored by the National Geographic Society and the following year the first stair was installed at what is called the Natural Entrance today. From there, things moved quickly: the National Park Service installed a trail all the way to The Big Room in 1926 and the first visitors arrived the following year. Admission was $2 per person, which was actually pretty expensive back then. And I can't imagine how long it took folks to get there 90 years ago on 1920s roads using 1920s transportation.

The Caverns became a full National Park in 1930 and achieved UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1995.

There are basically two options for the visitor to explore Carlsbad Caverns: take a ranger-guided tour or take a self-guided tour. The two self-guided tours take you into the Caverns for a length of 1-1/4 miles and around The Big Room for about the same length. The ranger-guided tours take you further and some require that you get on your hands and knees and do a little bit of (almost) spelunking. Since we were traveling that day from Roswell (about 1-3/4 hours) and to Las Cruces (about 2-1/2 to 3 hours) we decided the self-guided tours would do us just fine. 

The first question we were faced with when buying tickets was do you want to take the elevator down? Sure, why not. Seems like a great way to get to The Big Room quickly. We took in the 15-20 minute introductory movie and then made our way into the elevator, which counts not in floors but in feet down. The Big Room, where the elevator dumps you out, is about 750 feet below the surface of the Earth.

After a couple of minutes of general "wow, it's dark down here" adjustment, we were off exploring. We were about to embark on an hour and 45 minute tour around The Big Room. And for sure it was big! Any time I spend almost two hours walking around a single room I know I'm someplace pretty large. And the formations are incredible: stalactites and stalagmites and soda straws and draperies and popcorn with names like the Chinese theater, the boneyard, the hall of giants, the lion's tail and rock of ages.

But I have to say after a while, it all starts to look the same. I know what you are thinking: there are many people who would go great lengths to stand where I stood earlier this month and my response is "yawn"? Not quite that bad but pretty much, yes. Don't get me wrong, it is worth the trip to stand in The Big Room but after the initial awe of how long and high the cavern is and after you've checked out formation after formation, the stuffy air, the poorly lit pathways (not really complaining about the lighting; I did not want it floodlit) and the more of the same started to wear on me. I feel like a horrible human being.

This is my favorite photo of The Big Room. The lighting on the main column is really clear.

I mentioned previously that there are two self-guided tours at Carlsbad Caverns. I have to admit I was so focused on getting to the main attraction in the Caverns that I completely forgot what the other trail was. But since we had come all that way, I was determined to do both. And here's where my Carlsbad Caverns experience turned around and made this into a special place for me.

The other self-guided tour is called the Natural Entrance Route and it is quite literally the way into the cave. Most people start out with this one and then end up at The Big Room, I suppose. Since we'd opted to say yes to the elevator question earlier, we completely skipped the Natural Entrance and just fast forwarded to the good stuff, or so we thought.

So there we were at the bottom of the cave looking at our map that we'd picked up at the Visitor Center and it hit us: we bypassed the way most people get into the cavern; why not take that way out. Yes, you read that right. We took the elevator down and decided to climb out. All 750 feet up, which on the surface of things doesn't sound that bad. It turned into an amazing hike for us.

750 feet is a long way up, especially when parts of the trail actually go back down to get around fallen rocks which require you to go more up. Pretty soon, we noticed we were pretty much alone in our ascent. Everyone we passed was going down; the easy way so to speak. We got some comments: Crazy! You're climbing UP? One woman offered us advice to stop every so often and breathe. The best was just a single word: "Suicide!" Well, hopefully it's not going to come to that.

We asked the woman with the breathing advice if we were close. Her answer was a one word "No!"

Natural Entrance a.k.a. the way out. What we spent an hour walking towards.

If you hustle (I like to think we hustled), it will take you about an hour to walk the bit more than a mile from The Big Room to the Natural Entrance. You also might get a bit sweaty. It's hard work. Waiting for us at the exit were some signs shown in one of the photographs above. I love the "Strenuous Hike Ahead. Exhaustion and Weak Knees Common." sign warning you about the descent. Start at the bottom and walk up and you'll see no such signs. Don't say you haven't been warned by me.

I have to say there's not a whole lot of super interesting stuff to see on the way out. There are no grand open spaces with huge rock formations or underwater lakes. Other than the one enormous rock that had fallen from the ceiling of the Cavern to open up a passage below, there was little to gaze at in awe. The payoff for sure is at the bottom.

But what the walk up did for me was make me appreciate how far underground we were and how difficult it must have been for the first cavers (both Jim White and everyone unrecorded that came before him) to get down to somewhere magnificent. I thought about how primitive their first exploration tools would have been: maybe a rope ladder or a bucket or platform on a winch and for sure just some candles for light. These people were not walking down and up a paved trail with a couple of warning signs on them. If they got lost or their tools failed, they were dead for sure. I can't imagine the sense of adventure that would have driven them to go deeper and deeper and the amazement they would have felt when they discovered each new underground room.

Once we passed the breathing advice woman and the suicide dude, we started looking for any signs of the end. Was that a sliver of daylight or just another electric light positioned to illuminate some ages old rock formation? We kept stopping and looking up to see if we could see the light. We didn't dare ask anyone how much further we had to go. We didn't want to get discouraged. 

Finally the end we sought was not visual but audible. We stopped and heard some chirping, which was a surprise to us because we assumed they were the bats which weren't supposed to be there. Just a little while later we discovered diffuse light filtering through a cloud of condensation with a  whole colony of cave swallows darting in and out of the cave entrance. We'd made it! We could have taken the elevator back up and left the Caverns with a little bit of a disappointing experience. By hoofing it out, I really feel like we accomplished something and understand this place on a deeper level. It made my trip there.

Made it!!! Finally out of the darkness and into the light of day.

Carlsbad Caverns wasn't done giving us good surprises yet, though.

The drive from Roswell to the Park is pretty monotonous: about 90 minutes of driving on desert highways before downgrading to some smaller similarly uninhabited roads. But just before you arrive there, the landscape changes dramatically.

The Caverns are on the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert and Guadalupe Mountains so when you get about a quarter of an hour away, the landscape changes from flat scrubby desert to rocky rolling hills. Eventually you realize you are driving on top of the Caverns and their huge open rooms below.

On our way out we stopped to take a picture or two of the landscape we traveled over to get there before we headed out on the long drive to Las Cruces. Our delay got us on the road right about when a deer was crossing after we came around a bend and we slowed down to let it pass. Only it wasn't a deer. It was a bighorn sheep, the animal I've been seeking all over the western United States for about seven years. I saw one a couple of years ago in Zion National Park on the top of a cliff at sunset. But this one was right in front of us. Stop the car! We're taking some pictures.

Turns out it wasn't A bighorn sheep. It was the last bighorn sheep in a herd of 12 or so that crossed the same road. The rest of them were already halfway up the hill by the time we rounded our bend. They are difficult to see in the picture below but they are there. There's a line of rocks right in the center of the picture. They are clustered right in the middle of that band.

What a day! A great climb out of a deep cave and a family of bighorns. Can't get much better than that.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the third cave National Park is Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. Guess that's on my list now. Gotta be a completist.

Close Encounters

I went to Roswell, New Mexico earlier this month looking for answers. Answers about the UFO (or was it a weather ballon?) that crash landed on the Brazel Ranch just outside of town almost 60 years ago. Answers about the ensuing United States government cover-up to hide secret military operations in the desert east of Albuquerque or perhaps the fact that some sort of craft wasn't all that was recovered in July of 1947. And maybe, just maybe, some answers or at least some clues as to whether we as humans are really alone in the universe or if there's some other sort of sentient life out there. Sounds like a tall order, right? For sure, it was.

Now, before I get too deep into this post, let me state for the record that I am a believer in aliens. I was before I set foot in Roswell and I still am now. This makes me sound like I am some kind of crazy, I know. I have no evidence to prove my case and nothing tangible to show to demonstrate that which I believe is rooted in something concrete.

But I have two things I will offer here if you haven't already hit the close button on your web browser. First, I find the idea that the only intelligent life in the entire universe can be found here on our little planet to be against the odds and a little arrogant; there must be something else out there. Second, I am convinced that one night when I was a kid, I saw a light take off from the woods behind our house in Connecticut where I grew up. I'm totally not kidding; that is not a joke. Call me a fool if you will but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Do aliens eat Beef 'n Cheddar? I guess only Arby's knows.

Here's what I knew about what happened near Roswell in the late 1940s before I landed at Albuquerque airport on March 7 of this year. 

Sometime in the late spring or early summer of 1947, something crashed on a ranch owned by William Brazel about 75 miles outside the town of Roswell. Sometime after the crash, Brazel found the wreckage and on July 6 took it into town to show to Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox called the Army over at the nearby Roswell Army Air Field and they sent the base intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel, out to take a look at what Brazel had found.

After inspecting the wreckage, Marcel took it back to the Air Field. On July 8, the base public relations department issued a press release that was published in local newspapers stating that the Army had recovered an unidentified flying object. A few hours after the publishing of that press release, General Roger Ramey, who at that time was in charge of the Eighth Army Air Force District, gave an interview to a local radio station where he stated the debris that had been found was not an unidentified flying object but actually the remains of a weather balloon.

Case closed, right? Well, maybe not so much. While it appears Ramey's statement about the weather balloon quelled any sort of immediate panic about aliens landing in the New Mexico desert, it failed to kill all speculation. Over the years, there have been questions and rumors and wonderings about what really happened near Roswell and if there was some sort of government cover up to silence any sort of hint that the United States Army was at one time in the late '40s in possession of extraterrestrial bodies from a crashed interstellar craft.

Roswell isn't the only city or town in the United States or the world where reports of unidentified craft have been reported. But it is perhaps the only spot where an official government press release reporting the existence of an unidentified flying object was issued. And so even today, Roswell serves as a destination for folks who want to know more. This year, that included me.

Roswell's UFO Museum. At $5 per person worth an hour or so learning about what might have happened.

There are lots of places in Roswell to learn about what might have happened way back in 1947. The logical place to start might be at the eminently affordable International UFO Museum and Research Center down on North Main Street. If there's anything and everything you need to read about the Roswell incident and tons of other rumored sightings of unidentified flying things, they have it at the International UFO Museum. 

If you go (and I suggest you do), be prepared for a lot of reading, but there's enough on the walls of the place to educate you in a serious way about the events of late June / early July of 1947. There's also some general information about UFO terminology. Based on my visit to the Museum I now know that what I saw from my bedroom as a youth is called a "nocturnal light" and it is the most common kind of UFO sighting. I can also articulate the difference between close encounters of the first, second and third kinds. And hey, that might come in useful someday.

After the must-see UFO Museum, you might find a thing or two of interest to take home at the Alien Invasion store across the street (I picked up some little green men). For those wanting something a little more interactive, you might want to stop into the Alien Zone just up the street from the Museum and take a gander at their Area 51 exhibit. There you will find life size dioramas of aliens in spaceships or on operating tables or even tending bar. This won't be educational in any way but you might find it fun, if you can get over the dilapidated quality of the place and the irony of Area 51 being nowhere near Roswell (it's in Nevada).

Kicking back with an imaginary beer and my alien bartender at Alien Zone's Area 51 exhibit.

But if you really want to understand what happened in Roswell on a deeper level and build on what you can find at the UFO Museum, you need an ace in the hole. You need someone local to show you the places where events actually happened and who has talked to actual eye witnesses of the events of 1947.

Enter to our story Dennis Balthaser, a retired civil engineer who moved up to Roswell from the El Paso, Texas area in 1996. Dennis is a noted ufologist (yes, that's a real term) and speaker on extraterrestrial sightings. He offers tours of the Roswell area twice daily to spread his knowledge of what he knows about what happened in the '40s. This seemed like a great way to fill in our knowledge of what might have really happened in a very informed and interactive way. Way better than simply reading everything hanging on the walls of the UFO Museum.

We found Dennis on the internet, which is sometimes not the healthiest way to meet folks, but he checked out on TripAdvisor and other sites so we figured why not. If you are at all concerned about getting into a car in Roswell with some stranger or are just willing to dismiss Dennis as some sort of local crackpot, let me tell you he is the nicest person and both extremely knowledgeable and entertaining. Dennis made our day in Roswell in ways we (and he, I'm sure) couldn't have imagined. He also rates five out of five on 181 of 190 reviews on TripAdvisor, for what that's worth.

We paid our money online and got some instructions back: on the day of your tour meet Dennis at the southwest corner of the Roswell Convention and Civic Center parking lot near the corner of Richardson and 9th. I can't think of any better way to start a tour like this than with some sort of sketchy, cloak and dagger type meet up directions. It was a perfect way to start learning the truth about alien encounters and the secret government coverup in Roswell. And make no mistake, you WILL learn about that with Dennis. He's a believer for sure.

Waiting for Dennis at the corner of Richardson and 9th as directed.

Here's the story of the 1947 incident as I now understand it after spending a little more than two hours touring around town in Dennis' white SUV.

Sometime in early July of 1947, something crashed on a ranch owned by William Brazel about 75 miles outside of Roswell. A day or so after the crash, Brazel found the wreckage and on July 6 took it into town to show Roswell Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox called the Army over at the nearby Roswell Army Air Field and they sent the base intelligence officer, Major Jesse Marcel, out to take a look at what Brazel had found. To this point, things are substantially similar to what I understood before I rolled into town earlier this month.

Now, because it was so far from Roswell to the Brazel ranch (this was 1947 and automobile travel wasn't as swift as it is today), William Brazel stayed in town overnight and the next morning gave an interview to one of the local radio stations describing what he had found. In the meantime, Major Marcel took the wreckage back to the Air Field but made a stop at home first where he showed it to his wife and 11 year old son, whom Dennis would become acquainted with later in life. According to Marcel's son, some of the material his dad showed him was not of this world and couldn't be cut or dented in any way. Other pieces could be crumpled into a ball and would recover their shape in about 15 seconds. Intriguing stuff. Now we are getting the straight scoop.

The radio interview given by Brazel was never aired. That's because it was taped for later broadcast and between the time it was recorded and was scheduled to air, the Army got a look at the wreckage and found out about the interview and made their way to the radio station. Some threats of loss of license from the military as well as the arrest of George Brazel squashed any notion that the tape would ever see the light of day.

Major Jesse Marcel's house where the wreckage made a pitstop on the way to the Army Air Field.

On July 8, the Roswell Army Air Field public relations department issued a press release that was published in local newspapers stating that the Army had recovered an unidentified flying object. That press release was written by Walter Haut, who later on would co-found the UFO Museum in town. That same day or the day before (there's a lot to digest on Dennis' tour and you should take it in first hand for all the details), Major Marcel had wrapped some of Brazel's wreckage in brown paper and had met with General Roger Ramey who later on July 8 would make a statement that what had been recovered on the Brazel ranch was a crashed weather balloon.

Case closed, right? Move along, nothing more to see? End of tour? Umm...no. Not so much. Turns out there's lots more.

After driving through some of Roswell's neighborhoods and making a few stops, we headed out to the old Roswell Army Air Field, which is now a junk yard of sorts for commercial airplanes (it's actually an incredible sight but that's a different story for another time, or you could just go there yourself). Along the way the big question on our minds was of course "What about the aliens?" Turns out there's plenty of that in the story.

Alien landing diorama at the UFO Museum. No way do all these aliens fit in that tiny spacecraft.

According to Dennis, William Brazel saw the bodies of extraterrestrials on his property before he took his trip to town on July 6 but just didn't tell the sheriff. Brazel ended up in jail for five days at the Army Air Field so presumably he told them about finding the bodies at that time. In addition to talking with Marcel's son, Dennis also talked with Brazel's kids who told him that their dad claimed if they ever found any similar wreckage on their property they were to bury it and tell nobody. Too much trouble to talk about it.

So what the heck did they look like? Well, Dennis served on the board of the UFO Museum for two years when he first got to Roswell and got a chance to talk a lot with both Walter Haut and another of the museum's co-founders Glenn Dennis, who was the town mortician in the 1940s. Both allegedly laid eyes on the bodies in 1947. Both men seem to have related similar stories: gray skin, 3-1/2 to 4 feet tall, unusually large heads for the body size, no visible ears, a slot-like mouth and four fingers per hand (no thumbs). Dennis has a drawing, recreated by Glenn Dennis from a sketch shown to him by a nurse friend out at the Air Field.

Not little green men? Apparently not, even though most alien souvenirs in town are just that. According to legend, rumor or whatever you like, Willam Brazel after his release from jail was back at the radio station and someone gave him a hard time about talking about little green men. His response? "They were not green." Strange stuff indeed.

Hangar 84 on the old Roswell Army Air Field. Where Glenn Dennis saw the bodies.

There are lots more details, but at the risk of making this blog post too long and spoiling Dennis' complete story, let me just say there are plenty of strange coincidences and "OMG, really?" moments involving coffin requests, embalming advice, crash test dummies and many more oddities that were related to us from the time we got into Dennis' car and the time we arrived at Hangar 84, one of the last stops on the tour where the alien bodies were allegedly held for a while. If there's a spot that makes you believe something was going on, it's at this hangar where we were definitely watched from the other side of the fence, even though the place is no longer a military installation and is completely open to the public. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd have been picked up by someone in a camouflage jeep or something like that. We weren't, for the record. We got back to the parking lot of the Roswell Convention and Civic Center safe and sound.

I went to Roswell, New Mexico earlier this month looking for answers. What I expected to find was a town clinging to a myth about some aliens that they used to dupe tourists like me into driving three hours from Albuquerque across the desert to take some of their money. I expected to leave Roswell still a believer in aliens but not convinced that anything other than a weather balloon ever crashed near that town. I was wrong, which is precisely the reason we need to travel to these places.

What I found in Roswell was the best day of our five full days in New Mexico, and the other four were incredible. Everyone we met there was welcoming and Dennis Balthaser (who expected when he started these tours that he'd do two or three a month and is now booked twice a day each weekday) is the greatest ambassador for the town we could have hoped to meet. He made me believe that something happened in 1947 that we are not being told the truth about. He also pointed us in the direction of a couple of other spots in town that made our stay more worthwhile than just alien hunting; he showed us the everyday side of Roswell that makes the town about more than just attracting tourists.

I don't know anyone else who's been to Roswell. It's in the middle of nowhere and not quick to get to. But I'd encourage anyone to make their way there and to find out what's there for themselves. If you go looking for aliens, I'm not sure anyone knows exactly what happened in 1947 in the desert outside of town. And if they do, I'm convinced they aren't saying. But I feel closer to it for my time there. The truth is out there. Somewhere.

Selfie with an alien at the Roswell Visitors' Center. He's made of plastic. Or is he?