Searching for pie & aliens in New Mexico!

After leaving Arizona, we continued on our journey to Florida by entering New Mexico. Our first stop was Pie Town which as the name implies is famous for its pie!

Pie Town got its name in the 1920’s because a baker in the town was really good at making apple pies. A yearly pie festival sprung up not long after and is still held to this day. The rest of the year the town is very sleepy though with under 200 full time residents now and only two restaurants in town.

We arrived in the dark and dispersed camped just off the main road through town. It was a good spot aside from some road noise in the morning. We drove over and had breakfast in the only restaurant open, The Gathering Place. The owner was lovely and chatted to us, as did a local who came by as well. We each bought a pie on the way out for $14 each, I got apple and Tim got turtle pie.

From Pie Town we drove on towards Roswell and stayed the night at Fort Stanton State Park just outside of Capitan, New Mexico which we learned was actually the birthplace and resting place of Smokey the Bear. We paid $20 to camp at a site with water and electricity although we didn’t leave the water hooked up as we were concerned it might freeze.

The next day we finally made it to Roswell! It’s one of those places you always hear about in media and so it was sort of surreal to be there. We started with a $5 “spacewalk” which was a blacklight art installation which was corny but fun, and they let us bring Loki in! He wasn’t impressed with some of the aliens.

I had a video consult while Tim grabbed some coffee and then we walked over to the visitors center and the McDonalds which is shaped like a UFO. We were there in the off season so we probably didn’t get the full Roswell experience but it all seemed a little sad and downtrodden.

After leaving Roswell we drove 15 miles south of the town to stay the night at Bottomless Lakes State Park. For $18 we got a power and water site and there were a surprising amount of campers there! In the morning we were going to go on a little tour of the cenotes but there was really dense fog so we just drove on to Texas!

This was my first time in New Mexico and I enjoyed it but I’d really like to go back and properly experience more of it. There’s also White Sands National Park to explore!

Check out our video of our time in New Mexico here: