UFO Watchtower

2.5 miles north of Hooper, Colorado, on Colorado 17, 719/580-7901, www.ufowatchtower.com

The largest (and oddest) alpine valley on the planet, the San Luis Valley is rife with legends. Some of the stories claim the valley is an interdimensional nexus frequented by demons and demigods. Others describe buried treasure, sifting sands, and crystal skulls. Others yet relate unexplained animal deaths—UADs, for short, referring to surgical livestock mutilations in the 1960s and 1970s—and black helicopters supposedly ferrying federal agents engaged in extraterrestrial cover-ups.

Travelers with a special interest in the latter category should make a point of visiting the UFO Watchtower, where about 40 sightings have been reported since it opened in 2000. This ordinary metal platform is in the middle of nowhere, free of urban light pollution, and also offers a few bare-bones campsites, a “vortex” called the Healing Garden, and a must-visit gift shop.

Mosca, Colorado, 719/378-2612, www.coloradogators.com

The Young family had been in the fish business, raising their trademark Rocky Mountain Tilapia for restaurants and local markets, for a decade when they struck upon an innovative way to get rid of the dead fish that would invariably float in their farm’s waters. They bought 100 gators from Florida in 1987 and tossed them in geothermally heated waters that simmered at a steady 87 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Youngs didn’t know if the gators would survive the first Rocky Mountain winter, but pretty much all of them did, and as of the twenty-first century years, the Youngs are in the gator farm business, an unlikely enterprise in the San Luis Valley. The farm is now home to over 300 gators (the Youngs got the breeding down pat after a few years), the largest of which are more than ten feet long and about 500 pounds. In the snow-packed winters, the big reptilians even like to climb up on the snow and soak in the sun’s rays. Weather permitting, gator-wrestling classes are available. You can also pose for a picture with the farm’s currently most docile specimen in your hands for a “Certificate of Bravery,” personally punched and authenticated by the runt’s teeth.

Moon Canyon, 11.6 miles south of Rangely, Colorado, via County Road 23

The Fremont people were active artists in far northwestern Colorado a millennia ago, and their hunched flutist Kokopelli notwithstanding, this might just be their most intriguing work. Tucked away in a rocky chasm south of Rangely, accessible via dirt road and short foot trail, are a number carrot-shaped, carrot-colored figures, some bearing antennae atop their round heads. Vegetable gods? Carrot-like extraterrestrials that ate humans? Orange ghosts from the future? Your guess is as good as mine.

22 Lincoln Ave., Arriba, Colorado, 719/768-3257, ourjourney.info/MyJourneyDestinations/ClownMuseum.asp

Housing a collection of over 3,000 clown artifacts, this is most likely the preeminent museum of clown memorabilia in the world. There are paintings of clowns, and figurines, and banks, and music boxes. There are baby rattles and Picasso prints, Ronald McDonald figurines and Jackson Pollock-esque Emmet Kelly portraits. There are clowns, lots and lots and lots of clowns.

Jerry Eder started collecting clowns with the help of his brother and lady-friend in 1986 and moved from Sterling to Arriba with his collection in 2001, where it got its own building. Jerry dubs it “the largest collection of its kind in such a small building,” but knows of no larger collection in any building.

Jerry says he likes the colors and the smiles, and doesn’t consider clowns scary—as do many of the Poltergeist generation. “I have a lady who collects clowns for me that’s scared of them,” he says. “She won’t even come in here.”  

Every Fall Equinox, Crested Butte, Colorado

“Burn the Grump!” I yell. “Burn it!”

In the heart of Crested Butte, hundreds of people gather for the annual trial of the Grump. After locals dressed in odd, medieval-looking costumes danced, sang, and boozed their way through every eating and drinking establishment on Elk Avenue, hundreds mass in the center of town for the trial. First comes “the infinite” battle between the knight, “representing technology…the molybdenum mine,” and the Earth Dragon, “representing nature, people, good fortune, and everything wild.” The dragon makes short work of the knight, the audience cheered, but the Green Man—a local dressed in green with a crown of green leaves and a green facepaint—begins to suffer onstage next. He is dying. After a smattering of debate, it is decided the Grump must take the Green Man’s place.

“Burn the Grump!”

Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado, www.flydenver.com

If you believe what you read on the Internet, Denver International Airport is apparently the future North American HQ for the New World Order, complete with Masonic symbols, allegedly post-apocalyptic murals, and an enormous labyrinth of subterranean tunnels that hide deep, dark secrets about the Illuminati and every shadowy conspiracy in the book. Online theorists note that the Queen of England has been buying up property in the area, that whistleblowers have killed themselves, that Nazi “Black Sun” worship ties heavily into the airport’s secrets, and that the mayor of Denver was paid off by the CIA to keep quiet about the whole thing.

The airport is the nation’s largest, at over 50 square miles, and its construction necessitated the relocation of 100 million cubic yards of earth (one-third of that moved for the Panama Canal). Its sheer size, as well as its seemingly illogical location in the middle of nowhere and its since-shuttered robotic luggage system, makes good fuel for the fire. As does the mural with the guy in the gasmask. He’s really creepy.

Downtown Aquarium: 700 Water St., Denver, Colorado, 303/561-4450

There are few places where aquaphiles can snorkel and dive with sharks in the middle of a major city. There are fewer yet that sit 1,000 miles from the nearest ocean. The odd exception is Denver’s Downtown Aquarium. The largest aquarium between Chicago and Monterey, California, this is one of the only such facilities outfitted to allow the public to get up close and personal with its resident fish. In the 300,000-gallon tank—the aquarium’s largest—certified divers can drop in on the resident sharks (there are 21 members of non-aggressive species like nurse, sand tiger, and zebra sharks) and go eye to eye with a Pacific green sea turtle. Snorkelers can explore the 200,000-gallon “Under the Sea” exhibit, home to more nurse sharks, as well as green moray eels (with mugs that only eel mothers could love), and a whopping 300-pound Queensland grouper.