Of course, we hit the little gift shop next to it... and a few more down the street. Check out the street lights... they really market the alien stuff in this town!
We stopped to have lunch at The Cattleman's restaurant. The girl working at the gift shop told us if we didn't eat now, it would be a long time before we could eat again and pointed us toward the restaurant, indicating to us that that would be the only place to eat for miles. Michael didn't enjoy lunch because they served ranch dressing with his cheese sticks instead of marina. Oh, well... what're you going to do? So we asked the server about Area 51 and she said it was 20 miles out of town, back the other direction, toward the museum we had just come from. We drove in that direction, and behold, there were shops and restaurants and all sorts of businesses on this side of town. We felt slighted by the girl in the museum gift shop. We headed out to find Area 51 anyway. We didn't find it. We ended up driving so far looking for it, it wouldn't make sense to turn around to go back to White Sands. So, we decided to go on to the Petrified Forest.
It was far and we ended up driving late at night again. I'm not sure what time it was, but it was dark and we heard this terrible noise. It sounded like it was coming out from under the RV. It sounded like metal dragging the ground. Shirley said, "Maybe the leveling jack fell." Then there was a really terrible grinding sound like the jack ripped out from under the RV. The next sound was like the jack was tearing up the entire undercarriage of the RV. This got Michael's attention. "What's a leveling jack?! What's a leveling jack?!" We were all so scared from the sounds outside the RV, we couldn't stop to think to answer his questions. Charlie finally got to an area on the road where he could pull over. The metal on concrete sound was horrible! Charles was on the passenger side so he got out to take a look at the damage. He stuck his head in and said the awning fell off. Charlie went around to see the damage. Michael questioned, "What's an awning?! What's an awning?!" We couldn't believe all of that noise was from the awning falling off. Fortunately there wasn't any damage to the body of the RV. Charlie and Charles ripped it off the rest of the way and left it on the side of the freeway. We found out later from some other RVers and again later from the insurance company that that is a fairly common problem. Funny how nobody mentioned it to Charles and Shirley when they bought the RV.
We decided the best thing to do was to get off the road and stay at the nearest RV park. That happened to be the USA RV Park. They prided themselves on the serene surroundings and were very strict about the dogs. There was to be no barking or they would kick us out. There was to be no evidence of dogs anywhere except on the road or at the dog walk or they would kick us out. They made sure it was clear that they were an American RV park and would not tolerate anyone who wasn't. That part was cool.
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