#7 Extraterrestrial Highway

A MOMENT before the sonic boom hit his trailer, Joerg Arnu’s UHF radio scanner crackled to life. “Cylon 1, got you on radar,” said a voice just barely perceptible through the static.

And then — badamm-booom! — the whole trailer shook in a shockwave, and Mr. Arnu jumped, a big plexiglass window reverberating as a jet streaked overhead and through the sky.

“That was probably an F-16,” Mr. Arnu said, peering out the window and squinting into the sun. A telephoto lens sat on a countertop nearby.

“They’re testing a new weapon lately, and a laser system to shoot down missiles,” he said.

From his trailer in the town of Rachel, Nev., Mr. Arnu is less than 10 miles from an unmarked military boundary, beyond which the top-secret Air Force base known as Area 51 sits on a dry salt flat guarded by big arid mountains and bleak desert on all sides.

To the east, tracking past Rachel in two asphalt lanes, Nevada State Route 375 bisects a wide basin, coursing northbound before disappearing into a haze of nothingness beyond.

This is Alien Country, where more U.F.O.’s are sighted each year than at any other place on the planet, at least according to Larry Friedman of the Nevada Commission on Tourism.

A sign outside Rachel declares Nevada State Route 375 to be the Extraterrestrial Highway, the name given to the road in 1996. Renaming the road, the tourism commission had hoped at the time, would draw travelers to the austere and remote reaches of south-central Nevada, where old atomic bomb test sites, secret Defense Department airstrips and huge, sequestered tracts of military land create a marketable mystique.

Oh, and don’t forget the flying saucers.

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To drive the Extraterrestrial Highway — a route that snakes northwest for 98 empty miles, intersecting no other major roads — is to drive one of the most desolate stretches of pavement in the country. Gasoline is unavailable for its entire length. R.V.’s cannot hook up in Rachel, the only town on the road.

According to the Nevada Department of Transportation, an average of about 200 cars drive some portion of the Extraterrestrial Highway every day, making it one of the state’s least traveled routes.

On my midday drive up the highway in February, I saw only six other vehicles.

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The ET Highway is one of the busiest stretches of land in all of the western United States.

In Rachel, 40 minutes into the drive, I stopped at the Little A’Le’Inn (pronounced Little Alien), a bar and restaurant, which sells extraterrestrial-themed mixed drinks alongside self-published books like “The Area 51 & S-4 Handbook.” Its walls were covered with sun-faded photographs featuring aliens, glowing orbs and obelisks zooming through clouds.

The bartender was polishing a glass, standing near a man slumped over a drink, when I approached to inquire about area attractions. “You should talk to Pam,” the bartender said, pointing to a woman standing near the door.

And so I was introduced to Pam Kinsey, the first of several residents I met eager to talk about Rachel, and Area 51, and government sensors hidden in sand, and glowing dots hovering on high.

But Ms. Kinsey, 42, who has lived in the area for almost two decades, is not herself an ardent alien believer.

“We have a military base next door that can explain a lot of the lasers and other weird things,” she said.

Ms. Kinsey said that only a couple of Rachel’s 75 or so residents talk about seeing saucers and little green men. The tourists — whom she confirmed come from all over the world — are often the only extraterrestrial seekers found in Rachel.
…
DeWayne Davis, a 72-year-old retired Air Force engineer who came to the Little A’Le’Inn for dinner, said he has seen saucers in the area, including a glowing craft that hovered at high altitude before tracing a rectangular pattern in the night sky.

“It was at 55,000 feet or higher,” he said. “And it emitted an orange sodium-vapor color, not the xenon glow you’d usually see.”
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Before leaving the area, I drove out of town a mile to find Mr. Arnu, a 45-year-old software developer from Las Vegas who keeps a trailer parked on some land he purchased in 2003 as a retreat from the city. Mr. Arnu, a native of Germany who runs www.dreamlandresort.com, a popular Web site on Area 51, said that he files a Freedom of Information Act petition each year to procure dates and times of major military testing periods. “That’s when all the action happens,” he said.
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Like most local people I met, Mr. Arnu thinks the Nevada Commission on Tourism’s fixation with aliens is a bit silly.

“I’m a plane-spotter,” he said. “I have no real belief in the alien stuff.”

Source: Lonesome Highway to Another World?

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According to the locals interviewed in this story, what explanation is there for many of the weird sightings in the area?

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Check off all of the following that are TRUE.

The ET Highway is one of the busiest stretches of land in all of the western United States.

According to the locals interviewed in this story, what explanation is there for many of the weird sightings in the area?

How does local resident Mr. Arnu know that many of the sightings are due to military tests and not aliens?