Roswell, NM

Roswell, NM surprised us with some excellent museums and art and historic homes. We only stayed two nights but we managed to pack quite a lot of experiences into that short time.

First stop: Spring Street River Park and Zoo. This small park and zoo is free and has the unique feature of being a locals funded zoo. Individuals and families adopt an animal to provide for its care. Some of the enclosures could use updating and enlarging but overall it was an interesting place to visit. I won't show you photos of the animals in their enclosures because that just makes me sad...but the freeroaming peacocks were rather photogenic!

He's a handsome devil.

I'd never seen a white peacock before.

Here is one of the fine old homes in Roswell:

Colonial Revival style.

The owner of our RV park highly recommended the Southeast New Mexico Museum. Unfortunately it was undergoing renovations during our visit but an enthusiastic historical society member did let us see a little bit of the downstairs of the beautiful old home that houses the museum.

Freshly renovated, the wood features and furniture of this home are gleaming and gorgeous!

It easy to see this was an elegant home in its heyday.

The Roswell Museum and Art Center provided a comprehensive look at all facets of local history, detailed displays of Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard's work -- considered the father of  liquid propellant rockets, plus several art exhibits for us to browse. This was an excellent museum and it was free (donations encouraged).

The Emporer's Palace.

Lots of New Mexico art on display.

Part of the Native American display.

Part of the Dr. Robert Goddard display.

Next, we checked out the International UFO Museum.  This museum's primary focus is on the Roswell UFO Incident, which is either a UFO event covered up by the government or the crash landing of a Project Mogul ballon in 1947.

Hans is ready to join the aliens!

Thanks to our RV park owner's recommendation, we had a fantastic lunch at Big D's Downtown Dive. Definitely worth a stop and let's hope that TV show never finds out about this place...

Our last stop in Roswell was the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. We LOVED the variety of art here and the purpose behind it. The museum was built to showcase the art of the Roswell Artist in Residence Program. Founded in 1967, the program gives artists the "gift of time", allowing them one year of residency to focus on their work.

This painting reflects the contradiction of water hungry Los Angeles in the middle of the desert.

Mixed media of mosaic and oil painting.

We stayed at Red Barn RV Park, a small park just a couple of miles from the center of Roswell. There are only about 20 full hookup sites, and most of those are taken by seasonal rigs. The owner was extremely friendly and helpful and made this a pleasant place to stay. The only drawback was noise from the local highway and an occasionally braying donkey across the road (we wore earplugs to bed).

This is actually a pull through site, the white gate in front of our rig opens up.

Back in sites back up to an alfalfa field.

Rosie especially liked the view...look at all those squirrels!

We're off to Ruidoso today, back to pine forests for a bit.