On my travels last week, I was able to visit a couple of New Mexico's tourist attractions. Most of the towns and cities in the state have some enticement to get drivers off the highway. Or, in some cases, a reason to go to the town in the first place. This isn't unique to New Mexico. You'll see billboards for the largest ball of string or the deepest hand dug well in Kansas. New Mexico, however, does have a few things that are internationally known.

I didn't make it by the Norman Petty Studios in Clovis when I was there (Buddy Holly recorded almost all of his songs at this recording studio--not in Lubbock like the movie says). But I did go to Carlsbad Caverns, streaking down the Texas/New Mexico border from Clovis to make the two p.m. cut-off to take the walk down tour at the Caverns. It's $6 to do the walk down tour (there are a few other types of tours you can take, many of them guided--and more expensive), and I took advantage of the independent nature of my trip (I was officially on company time, but also directed to "take the scenic route").

I'd been to the Caverns (a protected National Park, by the way) in my teens, and the walk down tour was longer back then. You were allowed to go to a few of the caves you are not allowed without a guide now. But the six buck walk was still rather amazing. I took hundreds of pictures, and some of them even came out pretty well.

One guy was trying to take pictures of the ceiling (I did this myself, but realized quickly the flash would not illuminate the top of the caves) and bemoaned the low light ("natural" he called it, even though naturally there is no light at all). Apparently he was thinking it should be lit up like a Wal-Mart. He suggested that having the caves blasted with banks of florescent lights would "blow my mind."

I didn't really know how to respond to the suggestion we should be able to light the caves like cheap merchandise at a mall. So I walked on and later realized how much of a hike it actually was. My leg muscles have been a bit sore for the last few days.

After spending way too much time loitering at convenience stores (as part of my actual job) in Carlsbad on Friday morning, I got back on the road in the afternoon. Roswell and its tale of aliens beckoned as a last stop before Albuquerque.

The story kind of goes like this. We detonated atomic bombs both in New Mexico (at the Trinity Site--and I will be driving by there later today) and Japan in the 1940s. This destructive use of the awesome power of very tiny particles caused a large uptick in interstellar tourism. Aliens began doing flybys to see what we strange humans were up to. A group of them underestimated the height of the Sacramento Mountains and crashed their ship (killing them in the process). The bodies and parts of their flying saucer were brought to the military base near Roswell, and then a bogus story about weather balloons was eventually given by the government to cover up the goings on in the summer of 1947.

Roswell, the town, has since become a mecca for little green men seekers, and curious tourists as well. If you want a t-shirt or shot glass or fleece blanket with alien stuff on it, Roswell has many shops selling such things. There's even an alien-themed nightclub (right across from the military school). And you can visit the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

My first question was this: why not "Intergalactic" rather than "International"?

The other would be why charge $5 to get into a glorified science project? To be fair, the lady at the counter tried to coax me into showing a military or student ID to bring down the price. I said that I would gladly vow to be either of those things, but had no ID to prove it. I paid full price.

If you've done any "research" on alien visitations to our fair planet, you've seen the newspaper clippings, reconstructions and government cover up material you'll find at the "Research Center." I'm not sure what kind of active research they're doing there, and calling it a museum might be stretching it. But you can't get into the gift shop without paying admission to the museum. The sticker I received to denote my $5 admission said I was visitor #46171, so I'm not the only one who fell for the banana in the tailpipe.

I ended up with a couple of shot glasses and a coaster, meaning I spent $20 at the UFO Museum and Gift Shop. And it took me about forty five minutes, tops, to do this.

Let's see, $6 for the Caverns, a two and a half hour hike and hundreds of pictures. Or $20 for trinkets and rather questionable evidence of alien visitations to Earth.

It's not that I don't believe there isn't other life out there in this immensely huge universe, but do beings from other planets really think of Earth as a "day trip" to see what us crazy monkeys are up to now? Are they, in fact, on vacation from boring day jobs on their planet--and buzzing Earth is an attractive getaway?

If you've got the choice (and really, if you're in New Mexico and on the south side of the state, you can easily hit both), I'd go with the natural wonders of the caverns--which look quite otherworldly and inspiration for the design of the monsters in the Alien movies. Certainly much more so than anything I saw at the UFO museum.

Matt Worley would direct any aliens he comes across to visit Carlsbad Caverns as well.