Today was the day. The day, after 5 straight years of begging, bargaining, threatening, and pleading, that I got Peter to stop the car so I could finally discover the mystery of The Thing.

For anyone that has driven on I-10 between Tucson and Las Cruces, you will see approximately 532 billboards stacked one immediately after another titled “The THING?” with provocative statements like:

• What Is It?
• Mystery of the Desert!
• The Wonder!
• You’ll Be Amazed!
• Mysteries Revealed!
• Don’t Miss It!
• The Mystery Awaits!

(Note: I did not add the exciting punctuation for effect – every statement on every sign ended with a question mark or exclamation point. I can’t imagine getting emails from the person that authored those signs).

You would think on a random Thursday during the hottest desert heat of the summer that we would be the only people embarking on this odyssey of the strange and delightful. As we pulled into the semi-full parking lot, there were cars from Georgia, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Virginia. Apparently, I’m not the only one with a curiosity for the kitschy. But I was one of the few people willing to fork over $5 to walk through the museum. Well, if I’m being completely honest, I made Peter fork over the $5 for me, and then another $5 for himself. Let the record show, that Peter wanted absolutely nothing to do with this nonsense, but I needed someone to read all the elaborate signage, interpret the mind-boggling displays, and basically just model for me when I wanted to practice my creative photography skills.

You may think I just threw around the word “museum” casually, but I did not. This was a museum. There was an appropriate Hollywood quality sound track that accompanied each display; life size models re-enacting scenes; enough reading and display explanations to keep you busy for at least an hour, and an accompanying 45 minute audio tour you could play on your phone. It wasn’t a small museum, it was 12,000 square feet of gloriously air conditioned space.

Now, that I’m about 2,000 words into this post, I can imagine you are yelling “Mary get on with it! What is The Thing? Tell us already!!!!” (I’m kind of liking the extravagant use of dramatic punctuation).

Ok, here we go. I’m going to summarize what I think is a storyline that was created during a wild, and shared, LSD trip between two bored people.

The museum reinterprets the history of earth starting from the dinosaur age (geologists would be disappointed). In summary, two alien races have influenced the development of all of human history since its inception.

One group of aliens is mean, the other group is nice. The mean ones used technology to control the dinosaurs and create a large construction crew of enslaved labor. There is even a helpful schematic with a fancy techno name to show you how they did it.

The mean ones, also realize the nice aliens live in caves, but underestimate their abilities to cause problems. Because, well, “nice” doesn’t cause waves and they only seemed to be interested in drawing self portraits.

The dinosaurs eventually rise up in rebellion, and the mean aliens kill them all with an asteroid.

As life on the planet earth continues, the nice alien cave dwellers form a warm spot for cavemen and help them develop into great leaders like the Pharaohs, Alexander the Great, etc.

Basically, in every significant incident of human conflict, the nice ones have been on the side of good, the mean ones on the side of bad.

Alright, with all of that context, I can finally share the mystery of The Thing. It is a possible alien mummy discovered in a mine in Arizona in the 1960’s. It is believed to be the last remnant of one of its prehistoric cave dwelling ancestors. It appears the most appropriate place to keep such a treasure from 65 million years ago is a roadside gas station in the middle of the desert.

Now imagine me trying to reconstruct and “succinctly” summarize this entire story after a glass of wine while arguing with Peter as to when what alien races did what and which alien was found where, and when?….yes, this is a typical Thursday night on the road with the Andrades. I’m really hoping the hotel guests next door to us can’t hear us debating the finer points of alien domination.

After someone has spent valuable time that they will never get back in their life, and appropriately disturbed by all the “What If?” questions throughout the museum, you may be wondering how do people re-ground themselves to the present and what they know to be true?

That my friends occurs via a a well located Dairy Queen at the end of the hallway opposite the exhibit. What better way to cap off a truly authentic Americana experience than by strolling through three buildings worth of gift shops (one of the billboards even said “Gifts Galore!” The sign was not exaggerating) to get a Blizzard at DQ? Here, with an ice cream concoction from your youth, you can sit quietly and ponder life’s mysteries and histories through the lens of alien manipulation and conspiracy theories.

And when you’re done with that you can drive another 400 miles to Rosewell, New Mexico to see what the military has to say about all of this business.