Since I was first asked to be a part of Unidentified on the History Channel over two years ago I have written many articles speculating about why there are so many reports of UFOs visiting Earth but none of their occupants seem to want to make contact with us. Why is that? Do we smell? Maybe the next time someone thinks they see a UFO they should reapply deodorant or check the bottom of their shoes. But no, I think there has to be a better explanation than that. We do not even know if aliens can smell. The typical "Grey" alien depiction does not appear to even have a nose.
I have often thought that aliens are not interested in contacting us because Earth is not their destination. Rather, this is a waypoint on the way to somewhere more interesting. In other words, Earth is a rest area on an interstellar highway.
I travel by road a lot. Throughout the winter I may take dozens of trips north to snowboard in New York's Catskills or Adirondacks or The Green Mountains of Vermont or the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I have also skied Maine, Pennsylvania, and Quebec, among other places. Each time, I drive to these destinations.
During the summer, pre-COVID, my family and I have taken a lot of car trips to beaches on the Atlantic Coast from Cape May to Cape Cod. Most of our Spring Break trips to Florida have been by car - it was much easier and more convenient to do that than to fly when we had three little ones with all their baby gear and an Au Pair with a suitcase bigger than she was. We have even traveled during this Pandemic, going to my dad's place in South Carolina three times and a few trips to Upstate New York; we wore masks everywhere, of course, even though many people we encountered were not masked south of Delaware, for some reason.
I try not to make many stops when I drive. It adds too much time to the trip. Once Mrs. M. and I rented an RV and took my sister and her two kids and my mom to Florida. The plan was to drive straight through but there were many requests to stop. Each stop was at least 15-60 minutes in duration. That easily added a half day to our 20 hour drive. We arrived at our condo too late to find a parking spot for that enormous vehicle. I parked illegally and got a ticket. It was a whole mishegos.
When the kids were little we tried driving straight through to Disney World in the Family Truckster. We left from southern Westchester County, New York on a Friday afternoon. We had packed about a dozen DVDs for the kids to watch on the way. They had watched each one by noon Saturday. By the time we hit the Florida state line the kids were bonkers. They were complaining about each other and crying. I knew they needed to get out of the car to play and maybe get a bite to eat. I pulled off of I-95 at the next exit. I wanted to find a McDonald's with a playground. Luckily there was one there right off the exit.
We then spent two days at Disney and a week at our condo. We played in the pool where the kids made friends with some kids visiting from Montreal. We went to the beach. We had dinner at the Hard Rock Casino. We did a lot of cool stuff. When we got home I asked the kids what their favorite part of the trip was. They unanimously agreed it was that McDonald's with the playground off of I-95.
The next time we drove down to the condo Mrs. M. planned out our itinerary. We stopped at a playground or a fast food place with a playground for a few minutes every two hours. We stayed overnight in Virginia and watched a small town's July 4th fireworks show. We stayed two nights in Jekyll Island on the way and two nights in Virginia Beach on the way back. It was a lot more expensive and required an extra week but it was a wonderful trip.
Often I will travel by myself for business. My most-visited destination is five hours away, non-stop. Rarely have I actually made it there in five hours. More often I will have to stop to walk around and stretch my legs. Or I will pull over and take a little nap. Maybe I will sit down in a hamburger restaurant and stare at the locals. The drive and the stops on the way help to break up the monotony of having worked from home for the past five years.
So what does all this have to do with UFOs? As usual, I am building up to a corollary.
Is Earth a Rest Area?
On every car trip I have taken, whether I liked it or not, I have had to make stops. I do not like to pull off the highway if I can help it. So I will most often stop at rest areas. I suspect that interstellar space travelers must have to do the same. I do not know how long it takes aliens to get from one habitable planet to the next but I know how long it would take humans. It would take us more than a lifetime. Surely, aliens can do it much faster than that. But it still probably takes some time. Maybe it is like driving from New England to Florida. Perhaps Earth is a place they will stop along the way.
When I stop at a rest area, that is not my destination. I do not want to spend a lot of time there. I have somewhere I need to be. I spend as little time there as I need to. Maybe I will use the restroom. Maybe I will pump some gas or grab a burger if there are facilities. But ultimately my goal is to get back on the road and get to where I am heading. Interstellar travelers would likely have the same intentions. They need to get from their home planet to another highly-advanced civilization (and Earth ain't it, bub). This is the place they stop on their way - a rest area.
I would imagine that an interstellar spaceship would have a bathroom on it. But the RV I rented that one time had a bathroom and still most of our party wanted to stop to use the restrooms at rest areas. Could aliens be using Earth as a toilet? OK, that is a stretch. But they could be gassing up the Family Truckster here. Earth is mostly water. If you separate the two elements in water you have hydrogen, a great fuel source, and oxygen, a useful by-product. If those visitors also breathe oxygen and drink water they may be very interested in our abundant, free water supply. Earth is like one of those rare gas stations that still has a free air pump.
Is that what was happening in the Nimitz Incident? Was the disturbance in the water someone refueling their spaceship?
Burgers anyone? There are many reports of cattle abductions and mutilations around the world. Perhaps aliens see hundreds of cattle roaming around ranches, untended, and think they are free for the taking. If I saw a table stacked with hamburgers at a rest area and no one was tending it, I might think they were free. Why else would anyone just leave them there? I do not know if I would actually eat a free rest area hamburger. It would depend on how hungry I was.
I would not take one of these burgers if I knew they belonged to someone. But maybe aliens do not care about that. I would not think it is stealing if I took a nut from a squirrel - especially if it was on my property. Could aliens believe that Earth is theirs and we are just woodland creatures they allow to stay here? Or maybe Earth has been declared a park or a game preserve by some governing civilization and we are the animals who live there. Hmm...
I often see animals at rest areas - birds, squirrels, chipmunks, etc. I do not try to make contact with these animals. Why would I? They are just dumb animals. What kind of contact could I make with them? They are also wild animals. If I got too close they might bite me. I avoid any animals I see at rest areas. Aliens probably do too, out of an abundance of caution. They must know that we bite (or shoot on sight). At the very least we are dumb animals to anyone who can get from there to here (wherever there is).
My kids have a different point of view on this. When I pull over at a playground so the kids can burn off energy on a long trip I do not care what they do as long as they are being safe and respectful to others. My goal is for them to get out of the car and have a short break from being on the road. At home they catch and release frogs, insects, worms, fish, and other wildlife including a few racoons! Why would it be any different on the road? This could explain some accounts of alien abductions. Maybe someone's kids just wanted to catch a human and play with him.
A couple nights ago my kids and I went out and sat on the front steps. We had lamb for dinner and wanted to give our dog the bones. The bones would make a big greasy mess inside so we took the dog outside for this. While sitting there I noticed a frog by a large flower planter. It was just sitting there by itself, minding its own business, not hurting anyone. Upon hearing this the kids immediately ran inside to get a container to put the frog in. Why? No one could explain it. They just wanted to have the creature.
The frog spent the next fifteen minutes in a plastic storage container on my daughter's lap. She kept the lid cracked open for air. The frog was not harmed. If this was not such a common occurrence the kids might have tried to play with the frog but they were unimpressed with this one. It just sat there in the container.
Maybe this is what happens sometimes when people say they are abducted by aliens. It is the aliens' kids burning off some energy on their way to somewhere else. They see someone all alone and decide they just have to have him. They bring the person on-board and put him in a container. If this is a new experience they may play with him. If not, he will just sit there until Dad Alien says it is time to go.
When it was time for us to bring the dog inside my daughter said she wanted to bring the frog over to the pond and release it there. I asked why and she said that was where it belonged. I protested that we found it by the house and that was where it should be released. She suggested that maybe the frog was lost and did not know its way to the pond; she would help it on its way. I told her that maybe this is why some alien abductees say they were taken from one spot and returned to some other random spot. Maybe alien kids are trying to help. But in actuality, they are just confusing the poor person and inconveniencing him. She released the frog back by the flower planter.
UFOs Welcome
Most rest areas seem to be built like a NASCAR pit with His and Hers bathrooms. Some, though, are just a place to pull off the road with no facilities at all. The opposite extreme would be the ones with dozens of fuel pumps, several restaurants, gift shops, kiosks, free wifi, and enough toilets for a bus-load of tourists to socially distance from everyone else. Which one of these three examples is Earth?
I would say we are the parking area with no facilities. We have not put out the Welcome Mat for interstellar travelers. This is just a place for them to pull over. There are a couple of these on the Taconic Parkway between my place and Albany, New York. The dirty (not-so-well-kept) secret about these places is that people relieve themselves there, despite not having any toilets. There are several well-worn paths into the woods which all dead-end at a pile of toilet paper. Is this what we have set up Earth as?
If New York State were to build some simple facilities at the rest stops on the Taconic people would use them instead of using the woods. I would. If one of these rest areas also had some gas pumps and some fast food I would use those facilities too. It is about 80 miles (~130km) from the point where I get on the Taconic until I hit Albany. There is nowhere to stop and take care of every need in that space. I would definitely take advantage of a full-service rest area at the halfway point. New York State would benefit from the sales, the sales tax, and the jobs it would create. There would also be less raw sewage in the woods. Are you listening Andrew Cuomo?
What if we built a service area for aliens here on Earth? If we built it, would they come? What would they need from us? Toilets? Restaurants? Refueling points? What is in it for Earth? This could be the first step in establishing diplomatic or trade relations - it would be more than we have done so far.
Sometimes I will drive by a cheap motel and see a sign that says, "Trucks Welcome!" That is good to know if you are a cross-country trucker. I am sure these signs help to bring in a lot of customers who drive those rigs. It must work because I have seen this all over the country. Perhaps we need to put up a, "UFOs Welcome" sign out by the International Space Station if we want to make Contact. The ISS might need a bigger parking lot.
Thank you for reading and keep an eye on the sky.
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