26 Feb 2019 - Arrived at Roswell NM and no Aliens or UFO's in Sight!

26 Feb 2019

We bugged out of San Angelo KOA this morning at 0759 hrs and headed towards Roswell NM.  It was overcast and cool.  This is one of the longest travels days we will have on this trip.  With that, it is a fairly flat drive with a gradual climb from 1544 ft at San Angelo TX to 3573 at Roswell NM.  There was very little traffic along the way.

Some plateau's and rock formations

Large areas of windmills

Oil wells around every bend

The horizontal plastic pipe at the edge of this field is transporting water from central storage pits

When oil is extracted from the ground well, so is a small amount of natural gas. There's no economical way to store and use that natural gas, so it's burned (“flared”) right at the site.  Here are a couple examples we saw:

Many different types and styles of oil field pumpjacks

The soil in northwest Texas has a red tint to it compared to the brown soil of eastern New Mexico

As we crossed into New Mexico, we entered the town of Tatum.  There is a unique shop called Poor Boys Metal Art.  All of the street signs in Tatum are very unique!

East of Roswell we passed a turn-off for the Mescalero Sands North Dune Off Highway Vehicle area.  The is about 610 acres of 90+ ft sand dunes that can be challenged by dune buggies, all-terrain cycles and sand rails.  Sounds like fun!

The scenery was beautiful the further we traveled in New Mexico.    Snow-covered mountains and hills can be seen in the distance.  

Finally, 6 hrs and 19 minutes later we arrived at Roswell NM. We did gain an hour as we crossed over from Central Time to Mountain Time.  319 miles driven today and a couple of stops for fuel and to refresh.  

If you don't know the background of the whole "UFO" and "Alien" history in Roswell, suggest you Google it and read a bit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident   Basically, in June 1947 a 'flying disc' reportedly crashed on a ranch near Roswell and had been recovered. The government was accused of covering up the incident and stated it was a weather balloon.  The story goes on and on, and so has the popularity of Roswell NM.  We will visit the museum and provide more info and pictures tomorrow.

It did not take us long to find the RV park, although we got busy setting up and then heading to dinner, so we did not get any site pictures taken.  It is a Good Sams RV park, mostly gravel which is common in this part of the country.  Our site is a 90 ft long pull-through and 50A full hookup with free WiFi and cable TV.  We took this picture at the RV Park entrance when we returned from dinner and shopping.

Stats Update:

Campsite#:  16 of 30

# States Traveled Through This Trip: 10

Baseball Parks Visited So Far This Trip:  2 (Houston, Corpus Christi)

Point to point travel miles:  3241 miles

  - Avg point to point travel miles:  216 miles

Vicinity miles:  2841 miles 

  - Avg vicinity miles:  203 miles

Total miles driven:  6082 miles

Total point to point driving time:   62 hrs 27 minutes

Total fuel purchased: 514.407 gals

Total fuel cost:  $1415.28

Average fuel cost:  $2.761

Max fuel cost:  $3.179

Min fuel cost:  $2.279 (Wharton TX)

Average MPG:  11.51 miles/gal

# Nights at end of this stay:  102

Lodging cost:  $2827.83

 - Average lodging cost/night:  $27.41/night