Area 54, melon tracks travel

The day before we visited this top-secret base (where they are rumored to be aliens), we were sight-seeing at the El Capitan in the Grand Canyon where my wife complained that she had to pay a $20 fee to enter the national park. She is really into UFOs and was perked up by the fact that I was willing to drive for hours on an endless highway to reach the restricted top-secret military base Area 52. Much like visiting Roswell, NM and driving out here, there’s a whole lot of nothing to see. We pulled into the “Lil’ Ale Inn” diner and trailer park where she picked up a map of how to get as close to the base as possible. In spite of the endless drive out, she still insisted on getting closer. This was at night and involved driving on twisty, rocky dirt roads that cut through fields around the restricted area. The elusive directions instructed us to do things like “turn left at the big stick” and "After you see a big pile of boulders go right". All this led us to a big metal sign that, when translated into plain english, read "get the hell out of here or we will shoot you." Personally, I thought this sign made itself quite clear and I pleaded we turn around, but my wife still drove around a bit. When she did finally give up on seeing a flying saucer, the sound of a loud helicopter jolted us as it hovered over our vehicle, seemingly coming from nowhere. It had no lights and could not be seen, a famous black helicopter. “It costs about $1,000 in our tax dollars to send that thing out for us,” I said to my wife, to which she replied, “It gets them back for the $20.”