Forbes story on "Extraterrestrial Escapes" :: July 23, 2008

In a story this week on ForbesTraveler.com, I wrote about a different type of adventure travel. “Extraterrestrial tourism” includes trips to locales like Roswell, N.M., Nevada’s Extraterrestrial Highway or abroad to sights including the Rendlesham Forest preserve of Suffolk, England, the scene of a purported UFO rendezvous in 1980.

In Peru’s Nazca Desert, scratched on the ground about 2,000 years ago, there are images of creatures, plants and geometric figures arcing hundreds of feet across dirt and sand. In Mexico, the idiosyncratic iconography on an ancient tomb lid found at Palenque in the state of Chiapas has for decades cast speculation of the ancient Maya and their involvement with beings from out of this world.

My own involvement in this type of travel includes visits to about a third of the locations cited in my story. Once, after climbing Boundary Peak in Nevada, a friend and I drove the bumpy road to the gate of Area 51, a top-secret desert base where we were turned away by machine-gun toting military men.

Do I believe in this stuff? Read on to get a glimpse of an episode I had near Area 51. Plus, there’s a top 10 list of sorts to help you plan your next “extraterrestrial escape.” Or not. . .

Read the full story on ForbesTraveler.com. . .

http://www.forbestraveler.com/adventure/extraterrestrial-themed-escapes-story.html