 The UFO Reporter's Area 51 Journey, Part Deux.I'd be lying if I said that Area 51 really intrigued me all that much. In fact, my first trip to Dreamland was anything but memorable. I remembered the unrelenting heat, inadequate air conditioning and the pungent odor you can only get when you cram six adult men in a car for a seven hour trip. What I did not see much of were UFO's, strange lights in the sky and Gray aliens milling about the super secret base. We saw a light show, a few helicopters, a lot of dried brush, some cows and one close call with a scorpian. Other than regretting staying there for my extended weekend off instead of going to San Diego I had little enough to say about the place. Getting StartedSo why did I agree to go again? Well, rumors for one thing. At the Reporter, we have been in the unique position of hearing all kinds of rumors about Area 51 and just about everywhere else. As time went by, the rumors got more vivid and detailed. There was less activity there, yet the government had purchased hundreds of acres of surrounding desert to keep prying eyes away. New structures were popping up and the nightly light show was getting more and more colorful. Finally we decided we'd heard enough. We needed to go out there once again. Maybe it would be just another practice in heat exhaustion, but then again maybe it might yield something. There was only one way to find out for sure. A quick call to my friend in Vegas told me that the weather was overcast, raining at times and was about 15 degrees cooler than usual for this time of year. That pretty well decided it for us.  Truck Number 1. Actually my Explorer. I definitely recommend at least two vehicles when going out to Area 51, and as Mike will testify, gas can be a major expense. Getting out to Nevada from our homes in Southern California wasn't the longest voyage we could undertake, but we were more concerned with surviving the elements once out there. We loaded up two trucks, both 4X4s. Mike's was a Silverado with a big V8 we would soon learn was a mixed blessing. He and John would be taking that vehicle for the trip. Mine was a 6-cylinder Explorer XLT with all the options. Troy and I would be sharing this cab for at least the next 10 hours, which I didn't mind all that much. We cleaned the garage out of all the camping gear we could ever want and bought up all the Sparklett's sport bottles we could lay our hands on at the local Lucky. In the end, the supply list looked something like this:
Our departure time of 9 a.m. was delayed to about 11 a.m. due to Mike's unfailing knack for forgetting to fill up coupled with a few last-minute ATM stops. We finally made it to the rush hour drive home in Las Vegas by 5 p.m. It was quite painful looking at Mandalay Bay and the Luxor slowly drifting by as our trucks sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the I-15. But I had to remember we were here to investigate the Area 51 rumors, not lose money in the casinos. This wouldn't be the first time I asked myself if I really wanted to be doing this.  Truck Number 2. Mike's Silverado. Fast and powerful, that truck's mighty V8 engine proved to be a bit of a concern for us when gas stations were scarce. To Vegas and BeyondAs we headed up I-15 the casinos gave way to downtown, downtown soon gave way to a lot of gravel and construction yards, and soon even those gave way to nothing but desert. By the time we hit the State 93 junction we'd lost even the sole station we'd still been able to get on the radio had fizzled out to static. You know you're in the middle of nowhere when the seek button goes all the way around the dial and just keeps going!  For those wishing to make the journey, get used to lot's of this! It goes on for hundreds of miles without much to break the monotony. The area of Government land that borders on the 93 is, according to The Rand McNally road atlas, the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. From this lonely stretch of highway we could only make out the Sheep Range Mountains, which effectively blocked any view we had to the refuge. I just drove the straight and narrow nodding my head and fumbling another CD into the stereo when I spotted a single yellow spot on the horizon. Because I was easily doing 90, the spot got significantly larger quick. A single woman, dressed head-to-toe in a shiny yellow plastic suit that looked a lot like one of those chemical suits you see on the X-files. But unlike the TV series, this woman was holding a large stop sign. "Hi," the yellow-clad woman said with a bright smile. This from a woman who stood alone a hundred miles from the nearest sign of civilization. From the looks of that plastic suit, I would've sworn she's be baking to death in the 90 degree heat of the desert afternoon, yet she looked quite comfortable. "Hello," I ventured. "What's up?" She then explained in minute detail that we had to wait for escort through this section of the highway because of road construction. Evidence of this was sparse. Ahead of us on the sun-bleached road was a strip of new asphalt roughly 30 feet long, but other than that I could see nothing that would warrant anything more than a detour sign, let alone a live person and an escort. And what could have caused this small section of the roadway to be paved over? The woman in yellow did not know. After the first ten minutes an 18-wheeler pulled up behind us. Now there were three vehicles. Probably more traffic than this highway had seen in decades. Finally a white GMC Jimmy came over the horizon, driven by the best looking public servant I had ever seen. Pasted across the back window in red letters were the words "Follow Me," so we did. We went around the new roadwork. The new section was indeed new, black asphalt, but it was easily 6-inches higher than the road. The whole thing looked like a giant black slab had been dropped on the highway, and dropped might be an adequate term. There were no steam rollers, earthmovers, or construction vehicles anywhere to be seen. Even those grungy trucks they use to spread the asphalt were completely absent. The new road section looked just that - brand new. To my knowledge a steam roller couldn't have made it out of sight had it started rolling on that slab by early morning. About four miles down the road the beautiful woman pulled to the shoulder and waived us on. It was at this point we began to notice the only other life forms out this far - cows. Yellow road signs with silhouettes of cows and the words "open Range" were pasted about every mile or so, but when there is nothing else to look at you tend to notice such things more prominently. And those signs were right. On either side of the road there were cows. Lots of cows, in fact, and they all had free range over the area, including the roads. On three separate occasions we would spot these brown and white creatures on the pavement. Some were better about getting out of our way than others, but none seemed to care about us one way or the other. Next Page |