bswopes

Everyone was very nice, and the town seemed to have a sense of humor… The walmart even had aliens in the windows.

I was disappointed by the museum, though.

Something to keep in mind… even though you’re only a few hundred feet above the surrounding desert floor, you’re still over 6k feet above sea level. The air starts getting a little thin up there.

If you’ve got really good eyes (or a telephoto lens), you can see a cutout of an astronaut way down in the crater, near the mining equipment. I didn’t notice it until I got home and looked at my pictures.

Don’t forget to take a look at the wall they have showing all the manned flights into space, and a small memorial for those astronauts who have been killed as part of the space program.

Oh, and they don’t let you hike down into the crater anymore. You can tour along the ridgeline, but you can’t go down to the bottom like my dad tells me he has done.

Mullholland is all right, but if you’re going to drive it or any of the canyon roads in the Santa Monicas, please, please, please know how to drive on a road that turns. It seems like half the cars are driven by people who have never seen a curve before and just can’t handle going more than 10mph through them.

TO is a nice place to live, but I can’t imagine anyone visiting unless you know someone here.

Vegas is anything you want it to be. Everyone I know has a different sort of experience there, whether its gambling off-strip, shooting machine guns, shopping, seeing shows, or just walking the strip and seeing the sights.

I stopped off on a drive cross-country. Its worth stopping off if you’re driving by, but I wouldn’t go out of my way. There are several stores selling “Standing on a Corner” merchandise in the area, if you want to pick something up. Watch out for the one-way streets, which is pretty much every street in town.

I went to gatlinburg to attend a friend’s wedding. The surrounding forest looked beautiful, but Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge are tourist traps. Gatlinburg isn’t big enough to handle the number of visitors it gets. The street gets packed with cars making it very difficult to turn into or out of parking lots. If I were to go back, I would definitely stay out of town and try to enjoy the countryside, which was some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

If you do find yourself in town, the aquarium is surprisingly worth visiting. I didn’t think I’d be interested, but I’m glad I got dragged there.

I was fairly disappointed when I toured the museum. It was mostly photographs and news clippings. They did have some artifacts, but I think I would have gotten a better experience browsing UFO sites online.