“I’m on my way; Driving at ninety down those country lanes; Singing to ‘Tiny Dance'” – Ed Sheeran
With only one NPS site on the agenda for today it seems like it should have been a low key day. Since that one site had a visitor’s center as well as three other units and we also included two museums and 5 hours worth of driving, it’s amazing that I’m sitting at the Wellhead Brewery in Artesia, NM sipping on a Wildcat IPA at 5:23. Our NPS destination, and first four stops of the day were the various parts of Salinas Pueblos National Monument. We started our visit at the Visitor’s Center where the girl’s picked up the Junior Ranger activities. Since we were a bit ahead of schedule we took some time to watch the video about the history of the site and utilize the clean and flushable toilets.
From there we headed north to the Quari mission. Since most of the ruins we’ve seen in our traveles have been no more than a couple feet high I was shocked to see a towering structure as we approached the parking lot. Since this was our first pueblo mission we took a lot of time to line up the maps and descriptions provided in the trail guide with what we were seeing in front of us as we walked among the remains of the pueblo and mission.
Although I certainly must have learned about these missions at some point in my education the reality of what happened in these places didn’t sink in until I was able to visit them in person. Specifically, I hadn’t realized how the missionaries built their churches right next to already existing pueblos. I had always pictured them as remote buildings that tried to convert a broad geographical area. Constructing right next to the existing pueblo also gave them a ready source of labor and goods to exploit.
We also visited the Abo and Gran Quivera sites. To me the most striking thing about them was how similar to each other they all were. They seemed to have been building from the same blueprints and operating from a standardized manual as they tried to indoctrinate a group of people who had been doing just fine on their own before the Spanish arrived.
From Gran Quivera we headed South and West and happened to pass through Capitan, the home of Smokey the Bear! With very little hesitation Molly guided Fred into spot #23. After a brief struggle with math we paid the $6 admission fee and were astounded by the history of Smokey. Short version: Smokey the Bear was first created as an advertising figure. Six years later a real bear cub was severly burned in a forest fire, kidnapped by the local fire chief, and sent the the National Zoo in DC where he “worked” to promote fire safety for the next 26 years.
After touring the museum exhibits we headed out into the garden to view Smokey’s gravesite. The path was arranged in a circle with the grave about a third a way of the around. The really notable feature came at about two thirds of the way around at the burial spot of the first Smokey the Bear hot air ballon. That’s right, a balloon got equal billing as the bear. Again, short version: people flying the balloon screwed up, crashed into a radio tower, destroyed balloon but climbed down to safety.
Our final stop of the day was the International UFO Museum and Research Center. As we were approaching Molly read us several 1 star reviews and they were all pretty much spot on. The one that probably summed it up best compared the museum to an 8th grade science fair project. I would add though, that the Reasearch Center was well below the standards of 8th grade science. The best part of the museum was the pretty impressively sized collection of every imaginable book, vhs, cd, dvd, tape, letter, newspaper clipping, and any other media you can name that in any way connected to UFOs. If you ever visit Roswell save yourself the $14/family admission. Maybe go see Smokey’s grave twice instead.
