Sept 20th

We left Lubbock in the morning with the new fan clutch and could not believe how quiet it was – at first.  Actually, it never got very loud at all but seemed to be on all the time.  At low highway speeds you can’t even hear it.  When you get up to cruising speed you can hear it but it is not loud enough to bother us.  Today was not hot though so we’ll reserve judgement until we get back to hot country in the next few days.  I did manage to find an O’Reilly Auto Parts store and exchange my bad Hayden 2797 for a new one free of charge.

The source of UFO information

Our first stop of the day was Roswell, New Mexico – the home of the alien conspiracy.  You know, where the US government has successfully hidden the fact that aliens crashed and died there in their flying saucer.  It all really sounds suspicious until you realize that the US government probably could not keep something like that a secret for very long ever.  We went to the International UFO Museum and Research Center and did a lot of reading about what happened, who saw what , etc.  All very interesting and just something that we had to do being in Roswell.

Our next stop was Carlsbad, New Mexico and the Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  Both of us have been there before but not for many years.  Today we got into town at about 3pm – too late to tour the caverns but in plenty of time to visit the cave entrance for the evening bat flight.  The weather and the lighting were perfect and we watched as thousands of bats left the cave.  Tomorrow we will tour the cave and just relax afterward.