Being stopped at the lights in Roswell, NM, was quite long enough in the place - (in)famous for the object that crashed and was recovered in the summer of 1947. The US military says that it was a prototype high altitude surveillance balloon; those who would prefer something more outer spatial say it was an alien spacecraft that was the subject of a government cover-up. All I can say - on the basis of a quick (or rather, a lengthy - it's a straggling and poor town, with a huge military institute in the center) drive through, is that if it looked anything like this back in 1947, any alien probably hopped straight back to Mars.
The drive south of Santa Fe down 285 was (apart from Roswell) fast and easy, though it meant driving through much evidence of rural poverty and depopulation - tiny towns that seemed to be falling down or to be boarded up.
(more, I hope, on the journey back - the light was far from perfect this time). Then once I was over the border, the scenery became quite spectacular. Why had I never heard before how stunning the Guadalupe mountains are? Why had no one ever recommended driving down TX 54 - around seventy miles of stunning beauty (not the kind that works well in still photographs - clouds and sun and tiny storms racing across mountainous countryside and huge scrubby, sandy views), during which I was passed by three cars coming in the opposite direction, and, surreally - but I didn't hallucinate it - a very beautiful woman riding a pure white mule.
Then TX 90 down to Marfa is beautiful, too, if not so spectacular (that is, out of the world spectacular compared with NJ, say, but not compared with what I'd just driven through) - slightly busier (eight or ten vehicles in 75 miles, including two border patrol vehicles). And then this - which would surely look faintly familiar to a visiting Martian, but what's it doing here? Acting as a decoy?
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