Matt woke up with a strange nosebleed this morning and cant remember anything that happened last night. The blinding light from the window made it hard to sleep, so I put the pillow over my head and must have missed the whole thing...

There's been no Verizon signal since Houston, but I was able to make use of the wireless connection in the hotel this morning to locate the local Kingdom Hall. Would you belive Roswell has six congregations? We tried to get there extra early in case they started at nine, but it didn't start till ten, so we had plenty of time to meet the friends. Most people here are from somewhere else, and most were from Rhode Island or even New York. By some strange coincidence, there happend to be another pair of travelers visiting their congregation today. They were a really nice couple from California, driving across to New York of all places. Minus the detours in Wisconsin and Texas, they are traveling the same route as we are, but in the opposite direction!

Kingdom Hall in Roswell

Crossing Paths in Roswell

Some friends from the Spring Hill Congregation

You cant drive through Roswell without stopping and seeing the UFO Museum and Research Center. They have a huge festival every year around July 7th when the crash happened, which turns this quiet little roadside town into the worlds biggest Sci-Fi convention with costumed aliens walking through town. Even now, when the town is in its slow season, there are inflatable aliens everywhere: in store windows pointing to merchandise, on roofs of bicycle shops riding bicycles, climbing out of spacecraft lodged into the sides of buildings... There are even "UFO Parking Only" signs in some parking lots. The main strip through town has these old-school onion-shaped street lamps, and sure enough - they've got black alien eyes painted on each one of them!

On a balcony	Behind the window	On the street lamps	UFO Museum and Research Center
Some debris on the sidewalk	UFO Reserved Parking	Fossilized UFO	Matt learns the truth
Weather Balloon Wreakage	Four Fingers	I-Beam Symbols	Alien materials with strange properties
One of the test dummys supposedly mistaken for an alien body	Hey! there's one now!	Floating in a test tube	Neat Graphics
Disk Classification Chart	Hey, I think I know that guy!	Freaky...	Ancient carving explaining space travel
Looks like the Jetsons have some explainging to do	Some impressive crop circles	Craft Identification Chart	We came just in time for the autopsy
Should've used more sunscreen	Another crash site	Deflating	Flourescent Alien
Spooky...

We'd planned on driving straight north from Roswell to meet up with I-40 again, but a brother from the hall reccommended we drive west through the San Andreas Mountains, so we did, and didn't regret it. The road dropped down to two lanes with no gaurd rail, and wrapped in and out of the foothills.

120	Flatland	Nothing but horizon	Foothills
Driving by the San Andreas Mountains	Yep, that's really what New Mexico looks like	Crumbling house

So we're driving along this windey deserted road in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, when suddenly, the shoulders are completely packed with parked cars, and people milling about everywhere. It seemed so out of place, we had to turn around and investigate. Aparantly we'd just driven past Lincoln, the historic town where Billy the Kid made his last escape. It looks as though nothing has changed since then. Every year, they reinact the story with a live action play with horses, guns, and all. People must come from everywhere just to watch, because it was packed! It was almost over, so we just stood by the ticket booth and watched what we could see though a hole in the fence. A little kid kept shooting me with his pop gun, so I shot him with my camera.

They even have a Sherriff	We were both pretty excited by this point	Some of the actors	Bringing Billy in to be Hanged
Stick em up!	Breaking his chains	He's Free!	Yeee Haaaww!
The whole town looks like this

Soon after, the ground suddenly turned black as we passed through the "Valley of Fires," which from the looks of it is a huge lava flow. The ground is lifted and broken in places and occasionally scattered with greenery, but underneath is always black, rippled, and shiney. It was very eerie, so we got out and took pictures of it. The lightning started coming down on either side of us, so we got back into the car and took off.

Wow	The sky over New Mexico	Mountains in distance	Storm Overtaking the Mountain
Funny-looking cactus	Valley of Fires	Wierd lava ripples	So small in comparison

OK all you bet takers out there, get out your Road-Trip Roulette Scorecards, because we've officially broken a part. Nothing fell off, and everythings fine, but one of the bearings holding the steering column in place slipped out of it's plastic housing under the dash. It must've cracked or jiggled loose from all the vibration. We could still steer the car, but the wheel got really floppy. Matt reached under, found it, and pushed it back into place, but it only lasted another 60 miles or so before it fell out again. We got a hose clamp in Albuquerque, and tightened it around the shaft to keep the bearing from unseating itself again. So we're off and running, passing signs for Historic Route 66 running parallel to us along I-40 from Albuquerque through most of the rest of our trip.

What the heck is wrong with this thing?	No Problem...	Spider web on my window	"Truth or Consequences" is actually just south of "Elephant Butte, NM"
They made grandpa ride in the trunk!	Rainbow