It was a Dark and Stormy Night & Welcome to Roswell!

Out of nowhere, we had a bit of a rude awakening at 12:30 am. A big thunderstorm front was headed right for us, moving SE at 7 miles per hour.

We could feel the winds picking up quickly and rain started pelting the airstream aggressively, pinging and spattering across the front windows of the tailer, right above our heads.

A quick glance at the weather confirmed that a storm front was quickly approaching.

We listened to the wind howl and felt the trailer shaking for about an hour, while the rain sluiced down the exterior of the truck and trailer. We had no leaks, no hail despite a few cells being in the area, and after the wind slowed down a bit, we were able to get back to a fitful sleep.

We were fine, and that is life on the road, particularly as we re-enter the great plains and its notoriously unpredictable and fast moving weather. There is definitely a certain feeling of helplessness when we’re in this situation, but we were fairly well blocked in by the big rigs around us and the truck was blocking the wind directly in front of us. Luckily, the Airstream itself is pretty aerodynamic, so we likely had a more restful night than our boxy neighbors with the big tall class A’s and fifth wheels on either side of us. We just watched the weather for tornados and kept our shoes on in bed for a night. We can nap in Roswell later today perhaps to catch up on the winks we missed last night.

On the positive side? We got a free airstream wash and exfoliation last night! This thing is absolutely filthy.

Most campgrounds have a fairly strict policy of no RV washing and no maintenance, which we understand, so while we have snuck in a few illegal bird baths here and there to get the most heinous of bug guts off the front of the trailer, so we don’t attract vultures and other carrion eating fauna while camped, we have not been able to give the camper a full top to bottom bath since early May. The truck is no problem since we can cruise through any DIY car wash in most of the towns we visit, but the camper is kinda gross.

There is also no real point in cleaning everything up since each travel day just coats it in a fresh layer of bugs and road tar. We can detail it when we get back to Florida, so for now, we will take our natural car wash as a blessing and move on!

Today was the last day at Carlsbad so we packed up and headed on our short, 100 mile drive up to finally visit Roswell, NM!

Although we’ve tried to make it to Roswell on two other ocassions, it didn’t work out the first two times. This will be our first visit to the alien themed little city in the middle of nowhere. We are curious to see what we will see, as the maps shows a fairly small town footprint, a few grocery stores and gas stations for refueling and restocking, and at least 20 alien stuff shops. Can’t wait to check it out later today!

It was a quick drive and no issues, other than holy moly is it super duper rural. We were surprised by a few things.

There was an absolute ton of infrastructure stuff going on and a lot of oil and gas extraction businesses sure looked like they were going wide open. So, the roads and side roads were very busy. Everywhere on that stretch.

This area looks like it has boomed and busted many times over the last 150 years+ Lots of history just openly decaying or decayed right in the middle of town. Wild. Must be going through another boom.

We were also very surprised to see so much nut agriculture here. From southern California, southern Arizona, and now southern New Mexico., all along this corridor are dense, dark green, well-established , well-maintained, and very healthy appearing groves. Pecans, pistachios, pinons (pine nuts), almonds. These groves are everywhere and they are actually something they should be very proud of. It cannot be easy to maintain in the climate. The grounds were almost always immaculate, making it far easier to harvest with their tarp machines and tree shakers, which are very funny machines to watch when they work. It was very neat to pass through these areas when they lined the highway.

We were also surprised that the roads still sucked for the most part. Actually, on that subject, we were not surprised at all.

Long suffering sighs aside, it was a short easy drive and we rolled into Roswell at about noon.

We finally got to check in at the Red Barn RV Park!

We have booked this place three times now, and when plans changed on our previous trips, we had to cancel. It was great to finally see this place. The owner, Lee, is a very nice lady that bought this 1930’s home and barn twenty years ago, and she turned the barn into the clubhouse and check in counter, and built the campground. It is very quiet and secure, yet only a few miles from downtown Roswell. If you are passing through, this place is great!

We got everything set up on the camper, made sure the AC was working, and we headed off to finally see downtown Roswell!

It was far busier than we expected. The body of the town was just a handful of streets wide before the neighborhoods began, and my goodness, the traffic was actually pretty heavy with tourists, commuters, truckers, motorcyclists, you name it. It was a “push the button at the crosswalk” kind of town, and then stand back from the curb in case someone comes careening around the corner too wide. Even when our little walk dude came up on the signal, we still crossed the road with our heads on a swivel. Where in the world did all of these people come from?

We parked IMMEDIATELY to get our bearings and we decided to just check out the first alien tourist shop we had happened to see. The shop was surprisingly organized, well lit, fully committed to the theme, and the shopkeeper couldn’t care less what we were doing as long as we weren’t stealing. So we picked out our little alien sticker to commemorate the visit, settled up with the bored cashier, and headed out of there. We checked out a few more alien junk shops and an art place and then decided, yep, that’s enough Roswell.

We were honestly a bit jarred by the rapid increase in traffic and people. We have not really been around people too much over the last week or so. We were so startled in fact, that Mr Camera guy, Ben, only took one picture downtown.

Having satisfied our window shopping and knick knack hunting, we grabbed groceries to last us a few days, filled up the truck (diesel down to $4.499 here) and headed back toward the campground. (Look at all the alien crap even at Walmart?)

On the way, Ben said, “I thought I saw a sign back by the campground that indicated a place selling tallow and candles and stuff. Maybe you want to go there?”

HECK YES! We are definitely going there. Ben is getting better and better trained each and every year. 😉

We whipped the truck around and headed back to Roswell to check out Farm and Ranch Candle Company. Ohmygosh it was such an incredibly neat store. The kind of stuff that if Ann was to open a store, she would have the same fresh healthy stuff. Fresh farm chicken eggs by the half dozen and dozen, quail eggs, tallow in various applications, americana/patriotic home decor, build your own candles, etc. And the owner was there making candles. If they sold fudge, I think Ann would have moved here.

Well, maybe we’ll just visit a bit more frequently.

Neat store and the best part was Ben got to pet the ferocious guard dog that occupied the best sunny spot by the front door.

Gigi is four years old and is a very good girl

We were able to find a few items that we couldn’t live without, and we once again, headed back to the campground. As we pulled away from our spot, Ann noticed the very fortunate placement of the power line in front of Bullocks Jewelry.