Our Sunday started bright and early... or rather not bright at all as we needed to leave our Airbnb by 6 am for the long drive ahead. With it still dark out, we hit the road to make our way northwest up towards New Mexico. Sleepiness aside, we had a great opportunity to watch the sun come over the horizon behind us as well as watch the darkness disappear in front of us.

During this transition we (aka I) were also delighted to see the speed limit get increased up to 80 mph. The 75 mph highways we were on previously were certainly no slouch, but there was something satisfying seeing the number get rounded out at 80.

The pathway we took was a bit odd as we weren't going straight to our final destination Las Cruces, New Mexico. Instead we needed to work our way diagonally to make it to our first stop: Roswell, New Mexico. Since there aren't any major highways that run our exact path, much of the trip was spent zipping down rough single lane highways where we didn't have any cell phone coverage:

We saw some interesting small towns:

We saw oil fields after oil fields (I'll only include one picture for the sake of brevity):

But mainly we just saw lots of open fields:

The first leg of the trip was a long one, but we were excited when we reached our first destination at Roswell:

Amanda got a kick out of the light posts capped with alien heads throughout all of the streets. Yes, everywhere you looked there were references to aliens :D

Our main goal was to visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center

The entrance fee is a lovely $5 per person. The first half of the museum is exhibit after exhibit reading about the Roswell crash.

They walk you through the events day by day. Its interesting, but eventually there is just too much to read and you end up just skimming over a lot of the material (at least I know we did).

Want to see a mannequin that is the stuff of nightmares? Sure you do!

Now think of that right after you turn off the lights and are sitting in bed tonight. I don't know about you, but I may never sleep again.

The rest of the museum was a variety of exhibits about UFO's: photographs, drawings, statues etc etc etc.

Despite the overpowering amount of reading, it was worth the $5 entrance fee.

Not wanting to waste any more time, we hit the road again to head to our final destination in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This time we were treated to wonderful views as we made our way down highway 70 through the hills:

It was surprising to see how varied the terrain was on our 3 hour trip. When I think of New Mexico my mental image is of flat desert with maybe a few cactus's. Here we found ourselves seeing lots of tree's turning really pretty shades of yellow and orange as we drove through the hills.

As we passed an Air Force base we were greeted with a line of signs:

This is the freakin' location where they tested the atomic bomb! Amanda was also able to snap a picture of that sign on a dime with absolutely no preparation (that might have been the coolest part really).

We were greeted with a sunrise in the morning, and as we closed the last few miles to Las Cruces, we got to watch the sun go down behind the mountains in the distance

So we're here in Las Cruces for the next week now. This house has a separate door for us to enter, and we basically have half the house to ourselves. It's slightly weird in that we haven't met our hosts in person, but can occasionally hear them on the other side of a curtain. I just figure they don't want to spend the time meeting everyone, so we're happy enough with the setup :). Also, I forgot to mention that leaving Roswell we hit 2000 miles driven in the car on this trip! We've seen the odometer turn over twice now, this is truly madness.

Saturday we are planning on going to White Sands and then on Sunday we will be heading up to Flagstaff, Arizona where we will be for the next week.