RV Life Season 4

Did we come at a bad time? Amarillo, TX and Roswell, NM

Nicole Anderson, Anthony C Vicari

14 Mar 2025 • 13 min read

After a quick 3-week jaunt across the US, we were only hours away from the New Mexico border, the state where we would officially catch up to our plans after unforeseen circumstances caused us to delay our launch. We made great time, so great in fact, that we had about a week and a half to spare! We always give ourselves buffer time in case of any issues, but thankfully, very few arose. This was a welcome new experience for us. Our previous blitzes hadn't been so kind.

Our blitzes are not usually drama-free!

Read the entire Blitz West Series here.

Read the entire Blitz East Series here.

We took advantage of our extra time by planning a couple of destinations that we thought would be fun. We headed towards Amarillo, TX and set up camp 30 minutes away in Palo Duro Canyon. The canyon was an easy highlight of our year so far. Just look at the beauty!

You can read about our adventures here, but during our week in Palo Duro Canyon, we spent one day outside the state park. We've hit a few towns along Historic Route 66 during our travels, and we've loved the kitsch and quirkiness. We looked forward to seeing what Amarillo had to offer.

Read more Route 66 stories:

First, we headed over to the famous roadside attraction, Cadillac Ranch. An homage to the freedom and adventure of road trips, this art installation includes 10 Cadillacs stuck nose-first in the ground. Visitors are allowed to spray paint graffiti on the cars. A merch truck even sells cans of spray paint on-site. We didn't partake in the art, but we walked around for a few minutes.

We enjoy these types of weird roadside stops, but compared to some others we've been to, we were underwhelmed. The experience was made worse by the insane amount of litter, despite a trash can being provided. We also had some challenges getting there due to a lot of construction in the area. Up the street is a Cadillac Ranch gift shop (which is also a camp store for the Cadillac Ranch RV Park), but we skipped it because we were hungry for lunch.

We had been craving Mexican food since we got into TX, and thankfully Amarillo has tons of well-rated Mexican restaurants. We had had our tourist excursion for the day and so decided to find a local haunt. We chose Braceros Mexican Grill and Bar, one of a few restaurants with "Braceros" in the name, and all quite possibly owned by the same people. The Google reviews spoke highly of the authenticity, vibe, and delicious food. We couldn't wait!

We'll start with the good. The vibe worked. It felt like a local hangout, had Mexican and cowboy-themed decor, and the restaurant staff were all friendly. However, we were utterly flummoxed by the number of 5-star reviews of this place, many of which rave about the food. We aren't the biggest Mexican cuisine connoisseurs, but we're no slouches, either. We've both been to Mexico (Anthony multiple times), and we've had some amazing Mexican food in other parts of Texas, Arizona, and San Diego. This food just wasn't it. We're not saying it was inauthentic. It just wasn't good. The salsa was watery and very vegetable-forward, with absolutely no spice. The queso dip was similar: far too thin and with strange flavoring.

Our meals were a chicken quesadilla lunch special with rice and charro beans, and the plato Tejano, which included a chile relleno, enchilada, taco, and chalupa, topped with queso sauce and served with rice and refried beans. The first point of confusion was, when Anthony ordered his plato Tejano, the waitress asked if he wanted "all chicken or all beef." He assumed he could possibly mix and match since they were all separate components. Not a huge deal, but made weirder by the fact that they even serve the entree on two separate plates! The dish was also topped with some cheese, but not queso sauce. Just as well; we had plenty leftover from our mediocre dip, which we ordered a large of because we didn't like the salsa.

One of the seasonings in the Mexican rice tasted overpowering and didn't seem to belong in the blend. We were noticing a pattern of a lot of the food having off-flavors and no balance. The chicken quesadilla was probably the best item on both our plates, but the chicken was very charred, which masked any other flavors in the meat.

We tried to figure out what could cause a restaurant that's 4.5-rated, often recommended by locals, to be so disappointing. Perhaps a new/different chef was in that day, or they were having an off day. Perhaps the reviews are skewed. Lots of the reviews were from out-of-towners who were told to try this place out, so perhaps when they tasted the "different" flavors, their brains processed it as "authentic" and therefore "excellent." Purchase rationalization, of sorts. We did read one review that aligned with our thoughts, though, from a Mexican woman who also tasted weird flavors, wondered where the spices were, and was also baffled by the high ratings of this place.

We had some errands to run while we were in Amarillo, so we decided to take matters into our own hands and satisfy our whim with some homecooked arroz con pollo. We bought the ingredients and made plans for a dinner date the next day.

We had hoped to visit the Jack Sisemore RV Museum, but Google informed us that it was temporarily closed. We looked at the website and saw that it would open in March.

Since we were leaving the next day, we decided to cut our losses. Perhaps Amarillo will be on our route someday in the future, and we will be able to give it a fair shake.

We had a few remaining days before we were due in Carlsbad, NM, where we would finally catch up to our original travel plans for the year. We knew the perfect place to kill some time.

Before we went and searched for the truth, we settled into our first RV park of the year. That's right. So far, we had stayed at 4 state parks, 1 county park, and 2 private properties. We also arrived to this RV park a month early! Not really, but they accidentally had us in for a March 8 arrival instead of Feb 8. No big deal, as they had plenty of sites available. We set up camp and enjoyed our little dinner date with our homecooked arroz con pollo: Yellow rice made from scratch, chicken with a spice rub blend, and carrots and peppers.

When we began planning our Roswell adventures, we searched online for things to do. The UFO Museum and Research Center would be a must, but what else was there in town? Turns out, Roswell has quite a few museums, not just alien-related, but also art museums. Buuut the main one was closed.

We thought we should first go to the Visitor's Bureau to get some information and figure out our plan of attack, but oh wait, it was closed. Indefinitely, it seems, and with no explanation, at least not on their website. Maybe the locals know what happened. Perhaps there are some conspiracy theories around the closure that we've yet to hear.

UFO Museum it was, then! But not before we embarrassed ourselves at one of the roadside welcome signs and a souvenir shop.

Before we talk about the museum, let's first give a quick overview as to why Roswell has become so famous for its alien associations.

In July 1947, just outside of town, a local rancher named Mac Brazel found a large field of debris on his property, strange looking wreckage from some kind of aircraft, with materials and parts that he could not identify. He reported it to the sheriff, who told the local air force base. They came to recover the debris, and claimed it was from a weather balloon. They also reportedly detained Brazel for several days and supposedly threatened him to ensure he did not disclose any details of what happened. However, Brazel did not believe the weather balloon claims, which he stated publicly. Soon after, the story spread, and grew into claims that the remains were from an alien spacecraft that had crash landed, and may have included actual humanoid alien bodies, which the military was studying and covering up. Decades later, the military admitted the wreckage was not a weather balloon, but said instead it was actually a high-tech experimental surveillance balloon that was top secret because it was being used to monitor nuclear weapon tests. The theory that an alien spaceship crash occurred on Brazel's ranch persists to this day, and believers have further supported it with the stories of numerous other sightings before and after this event.

No matter what you believe about the Roswell Incident of 1947, the UFO Museum is actually set up really well. The research center spans multiple rooms and contains a whole library of books, videos, and cassette tapes, plus exhibits and displays.

The museum is surprisingly un-kitschy. It's more like a history museum, offering timelines of the development of Air Force bases in the area, and the various mysterious sightings. There are several interactive displays and videos. The back of the museum is devoted to various extraterrestrial storylines in film, and it included a display on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which we know very well now, thanks to our living there for a few days. Then, across the main room are several exhibits on alien sightings throughout history, with some petroglyphs even possibly depicting these otherworldly creatures!

The "simulation," where you can watch from the perspective of the alien spaceship as it crashed outside Roswell

The categories of sightings. How many have you had?

You might be wondering, after visiting Roswell and seeing all of the "evidence," what do we believe is THE TRUTH?!

Roswell, NM is in a rural area, far from major cities. Back in the 1940s, people there would have had some experience with technology such as cars and trucks, radios, telephones, and electricity. However, for the most part, their day-to-day lives and work would have been much lower tech. Ranchers like Brazel likely used a lot of hand tools, horse-drawn wagons, and mule-drawn plows. People in the area lived in adobe buildings. Therefore, the materials that Brazel found on his land probably seemed quite futuristic to him. That's not to say that the military didn't cover up some covert operation. The world was transitioning out of a war era and times were unstable. This also isn't to say that we don't think there is alien life somewhere out there, possibly for much longer than the human race has existed. After all, we have had our own "nocturnal light" sighting...

The bottom line is, it's egocentric of us to believe that life doesn't exist somewhere else beyond Earth. We also tend to forget just how young we are as a species. There is a great big universe out there, most of which we know nothing about. Places like Roswell help us stay curious to the possibilities.

A couple days later, we left Roswell and officially closed the chapter on our Season 4 blitz west. We mentioned that our next stop would be Carlsbad, and so while it may not be a surprise what we have planned, it'll surely be an epic adventure that you don't want to miss.

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