3 museums in 3 days

Once more we were about to leave one of our overnight stays with me thinking "can we experience anything like this ever again?". It felt like we had had a once-in-a-lifetime visit to New Orleans and similarly to Louisville, Kentucky, I didn't want the stay to end. But the itinerary called out to me, we had 6 hours to get to Houston and the museum we were going to check out, The Lyndon B Johnson Space Center, closed at 19:00. We just simply had to get moving.

The drive to Texas was uneventful. We entered Lake Charles in Louisiana to eat lunch and found a small diner in the center of historic down town. They had the best burger I've sampled during this trip! The jalapeño sourdough bread they made themselves was wonderful. The Chipotle mayonaise was just the right amount of spicy and the patty was seasoned and well done. I tried to get Dan and Tomasz to throw away the "healthy" salads they had chosen so that they could  enjoy the fantastic meal that was overloading my senses, but they wouldn't have any of it. Apparently the amount of fat and sugar lately scared them into whatever it was that they chose to eat. At least Pontus agreed that it was the best hamburger so far!

Sadly, reaching Houston "on time" was more difficult than I expected because of a number of unplanned bathroom breaks as well as a very late departure from NOLA. Finding breakfast might have had something to do with it. We reached the Johnson Space Center (or JSC for short) after 16:00, which meant we had less than 3 hours to check out the JSC, which according to their website, would take anywhere between 3 and 5 hours to see.

The first exhibit we chose was a tour tram that brought us around the whole area. The most interesting part to me happened to be the fact that their equipment seems really really old. It got me to thinking what kind of budget NASA has, since their computers are from the last millenium! I took a couple of more shots of various things, but I'll let the pictures speak themselves since we have more events to cover in this post

The JSC was very impressive,  but we still had another 4 hours before we could check into our hotel in Dallas. For some reason I thought that they distance between the two large texan cities was far shorter, but Louisville-friend Stu had informed me just how far it was. Since we were so late from our previous very fancy hotel, the information didn't really help me. We still arrived around midnight, crazy tired from the drive but glad that everything worked out alright.

Waking up in Dallas was pleasant thanks to their breakfastspread. We had checked into a pretty cheap hotel since it would just be a quick stop on our way. We took our time, enjoyed everything (including fresh strawberries!) and then packed up The Fish. Our car, remember? If not, go back and read the second post! Do it, DO IT NAAAUUUOOOWW!! Erh, right...so we had packed up the Fish and drove on to check out our second hotel in as many days. 

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas is a very special kind of "Museum". I'll try to explain why it exists for those not familiar with a certain popular conspiracy theory. You see, in 1963 American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas. He was riding in an open top limousine and a sniper managed to squeeze off a number of shots toward JFK. The president was pronounced dead 30 min later. There have been two investigations by the United States government into what happened on that day, the first in 1964 claimed that the apprehended shooter Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed the sole shooter, the second investigation (done in 1978, 14 years later!) claimed that JFK was "probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy". These two investigations, the differences between them, various unnecessary cover ups has led to a number of conspiracy theories regarding Who killed JFK. That in turn means that there is now a museum in an old book depository in Dallas, Texas catering to the notion that if you get as much of the "facts" as possible, you can make your own mind up. I put the word facts in quotationmarks because if you are to believe in conspiracy theories, then they include falsified reports and evidence. 

The museum was definitely very fascinating to check out and led to firey discussions between myself and  Pontus about what actually happened. I wont go into detail about the actual theories, or events of it all, but I will say that if you're ever in Dallas, then this place is something you should most certainly check out, regardless what you know (or think you know ;) ) about the assassination!

After a wonderful visit to that famous (it has spawned 2 tvshows just by its name, so I'd say it's quite famous) city in Texas with its crazy museum, another long roadtrip waited. We were going to drive from Dallas to Roswell, New Mexico. It would be a 7 hour drive, and if our previous stretches on the road had been uneventful, they would seem like wild parties in comparison to what we encountered between Dallas and Roswell. We drove through barren dusty lands that housed nothing but oil pumps, proving clearly why a lot of foreigners view Texas as a big rich state, thanks to their massive oil reserves (almost twice as much as the next state on the list, alaska). We tried to see something entertaining on the road, but really _nothing_ happened. It was mostly a straight road, that let us drive right through Texas, into New Mexico.

                    Dust...                               Hot air = optical illusion             Loong straight road

Checking into our cheap(est) hotel in Roswell was the first snag that we hit on this trip. For some reason we had only gotten a bedroom with a single bed. It was late, the hotel receptionist didn't speak english very well and I just wanted to go to bed. Tensions were running high and I felt sick to my stomach that we wouldn't be able to get any proper sleep that night. Luckily, I managed to cool down and realized that in this particular town, I had actually reserved two separate hotel rooms instead of the usual two queensized beds in one hotel room. I ran back to the pakistani receptionist and asked for a hotel room in any of the other travellers name and breathed out a deep sigh of relief when a reservation in Dan's name was discovered. 

After a hot near sleepless night in Roswell's blistering desert heat, we slowly made our way "downtown". Roswell is a very small area, with two major roads (and lots of smaller ones of course), Main Street and 2nd Street. Right in the center (meaning at the crossroads between Main and 2nd, you'll find the one singular reason for our visit - The Alien "Museum". Another day, another museum, yet another set of qutotation  marks. This was so far the cheesiest, most ridiculous museum we visited. Another place based on conspiracy theories regarding government coverups and if Aliens  live among us. That's the reason why we drove to Roswell, that's why we were in that little dump! We were there to find aliens. Sadly, nothing was on offer, we took a couple of pics and then went on our way.

A cultural couple of days that just meant stops along the way to a long awaited stop - The Grand Canyon! More on that tomorrow.