The rugged mountains and the slow-mo village of Ruidoso, New Mexico, are two of my favorite places. Momo and I try and visit a few times a year, and this year, in February, we are taking a road trip to the mountains and hopefully some snow. Momo likes communicating with the wild Deer via nose-to-nose rubs and feeding them Quaker Granola cereal. She’s quite popular with the local wildlife, and they seem to know where we are staying and what time we arrive. Word travels fast in the forest.
One stop we look forward to is the McDonald’s in Roswell, New Mexico. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill burger joint; the building is built to resemble an alien saucer inside and out and is complete with small alien statues around the exterior of the building. We love it, as do thousands of other earthly visitors who flock there to take pictures and eat an alien burger.
On the first trip we took to Ruidoso years ago, I spent eight hours talking up Roswell, the saucer crash that happened in 1947, the government cover-up, and space aliens in general. Momo was worked up and ready to meet a spaceman by the time we rolled up to the space-age McDonalds. We had a burger, checked out the local costumed weirdos that hung around the place, and then got on the road to Ruidoso. I told her to be on the lookout for aliens, since the town is lousy with them. I had never seen her so excited and hopeful. She put on her tin-foil hat, got her iPhone camera ready, and was looking for a close encounter of any kind. A block or two from the McDonalds, she had a conniption fit and almost jumped from our moving car. Walking down the sidewalk with two larger human units was a small alien in a red suit and silver shoes. We pulled over, and she jumped out and started taking its picture. The parents of the big-headed little boy in a Spider-Man jammies didn’t take kindly to a crazy woman with a tin-foil hat taking pictures of them. I felt sort of bad, but not too bad. She still believes.
Notes From The Cactus Patch 