Tag: weird

Roswell UFO Museum

Driving into Roswell at night is spooky.

It shouldn’t be because it’s just a city like every other we’ve visited, but it’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the desert and there’s nothing else on the road to Roswell than military bases, missile ranges and border patrol checks (even though it’s a fair way from the Mexican border). Add in a pretty spectacular lightning storm and I don’t mind telling you I was spooked before we even got there.

In the light of day Roswell looked fairly normal so we started with a trip to the UFO Museum and Research Center . The museum contains a large collection on newspaper clippings, testimonials, photos and other “evidence” of the UFO crash that some say happened on 4th July 1947. There is so much to read you could spend days there.

Now, obviously I don’t believe in UFO crash landings, but the sheer number of people involved in the incident and some indisputable facts about cover-ups, threats to individuals from the military and “deathbed confession” from some that had stayed quiet about the incident their whole lives all point the the fact that ‘something’ definitely happened. There are so many reports from those who either saw the crash, the military cordons or debris from the site etc. that it’s either the best organised hoax ever (involving hundreds of people), or the military were definitely trying to cover something up!

Given Roswell’s location, very close to Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands Missile Testing Range , and given that the US were testing all kinds of post WWII technologies in the desert including nuclear weapons delivery delivery and airborne radar tracking equipment, the obvious explanation is that some top secret defence technology crashed to the ground and the military came and took it away. That explanation is dull though and I’m glad there are still thousands of crazies out there perpetuating the conspiracy theories, most of them in Roswell.

So, having seen the (comparatively) serious stuff, we set out to find some of the craziness and we weren’t disappointed. We started with the worlds only UFO themed McDonalds and then visited ‘Alien Zone’ which was absolutely nuts. I won’t try to explain it but I hope you enjoy the photos.

 

 

 

Titan Missile Museum

What better way to follow our slightly bizarre morning touring a US military base than to visit a decommissioned cold war nuclear missile launch site?

The Titan Missile Museum is an underground facility around 15 miles south of Tucson housing a 103ft Titan II missile which used to contain a 9 megaton nuclear missile aimed at Russia. We were taken on a guided tour of various underground rooms and corridors including the control room and the missile silo which still contains an inert Titan missile.

There were 18 of these missile sites located around the Tucson area and each one was manned in 24 hour shifts and ready to launch a missile within 58 seconds that had a range of over 5000 miles and could hit a target within 1 mile, which seems incredible even now, let alone in 1963 when it was built.

Being able to tour an actual cold war nuclear missile launch site was a privilege in itself, but being shown round by Steve, an ex-employee at one of these sites and taken through the launch sequence in the control room was pretty special. Steve uses a walking stick these days and can’t take the stairs, but his enthusiasm for the site was matched only by our fascination. I asked him if the job was scary, he replied “No, but it could get quite tedious”.

As you can probably tell, we’ve been pretty excited by our last couple of trips .Our last few days visiting meteor craters, airplane graveyards and cold war missile sites have been great fun. It really does seem that the weirder this holiday gets the more interesting it gets, which is good because after visiting Tombstone tomorrow we’re off to Roswell!

 

Atomic Testing Museum

It might not be at the top of most people’s list of things to do in Las Vegas, but we spent an interesting couple of hours at the Atomic Testing Museum earlier today.

The museum mainly covers the history of the Nevada Test Site where over 900 nuclear bombs have been detonated, just 65 miles from Las Vegas, but also takes you through a general timeline of the invention of nuclear weapons.

I knew that the Americans were keen on testing nukes in the desert, but I had no idea it was so many and so close to Las Vegas. Apparently the testing was one of the factors in the growth of tourism here. People used to come to Las Vegas to visit the viewing points where they could see the explosions in the distance. Crazy!

I also had no idea the site was still in use, not for weapons testing but for training emergency services to deal with a nuclear accident or terrorist attack.

Strangely, they also had a couple of other exhibits that weren’t related to nuclear testing, including a large piece of a steel strut from the World Trade Center. There was no explanation of why, but why not?

Musee Mecanique

Yesterday was kind of a rest day for us in San Francisco, but we did manage to get down to Fisherman’s Wharf again in the evening and came across the ‘Musée Mécanique’ at Pier 45.

It describes itself as “One of the world’s largest privately owned collection of coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines in their original working condition.”

All of the machines are playable from the antique exhibits (some of which are over 100 years old) through the the most recent machines from the 80’s, some of which I remember playing as a kid such as ‘Pole Position’ and ‘Super Sprint’ and really enjoyed playing again. We also go to play on an original ‘Pong’ machine with paddles which was one of the first proper video games in 1972.

After grabbing some food in San Francisco’s famous Boudin Bakery and learning about how their founders travelled from France to set up a bakery during the gold rush and how the bakery survived the 1906 earthquake in their own mini museum, we took a cable car (tram) back to our hotel.

The cable cars are one of San Francisco’s biggest tourist attractions and they still run the original cars, some of which are over 100 years old, up and down the hills of San Francisco. They are so called because the streets under the tracks actually have a cable running right the way underneath them which is constantly moving at 9mph. The cable car controller starts and stops the tram by causing it to grip onto the underground cable when he wants the car to move and letting go when he needs the car to stop.

The best thing though is that passengers are encouraged to hang onto the outside of the car and lean out as it zips up and down the hills. this is especially fun at night when the cable car controllers are having a bit of fun with the tourists and decide to see how fast they can go round some of the corners. The photo at the bottom is a blurry one of me hanging out of the cable car as we flew down a hill.