Arizona what is the thing

For all I know, the people responsible for these advertisements have circumnavigated the globe with billboards. They've hired a translator to phrase the questions in Russian, Spanish, Chinese. They've put a billboard at the bottom of the Marianas Trench and are currently in talks with Elon Musk to put a billboard on the moon. By the time you reach the tiny town of Texas Canyon, Arizona—home of The Thing—the question will have driven you mad.

And even then, you won't be much closer to understanding The Thing. Instead, you'll find yourself parked in front of a gas station and a bright yellow building promising souvenirs, T-shirts, jewelry, gifts, and a museum; The Thing, it suggests, is buried somewhere inside.

Before you can gain access to The Thing, you have to pay the attendant one American dollar. This is non-negotiable. When you do so, the attendant will tell you to enjoy the museum. Aha, you might think, The Thing is a museum. But this is a mistake. The museum is a thing, certainly, but not The Thing. The museum is comprised of three long metal sheds painted with stripes of alternating primary colors.

On the floor of these sheds are large yellow footprints, presumably made by The Thing. The first shed is long and poorly ventilated. It houses some of the attraction's larger exhibits, such as a Rolls Royce supposedly used by Adolf Hitler.

How the Hitlermobile wound up in Texas Canyon, Arizona, is not disclosed to the visitor. Farther down the shed, there is a still-life arrangement featuring a disfigured wooden mannequin staring at the roof, in a gesture that appears to be looking for God.

Behind the mannequin is a four-poster bed outfitted with two dusty and sheet-less mattresses, and beside the bed is a chifforobe and an upright piano. There is a Persian rug on the ground, and the rug is littered with pennies tossed there by previous visitors to the museum. Related Articles. Related Articles Latest Articles. Nov 12th Community , Partner Content , Road Culture. My visit to three places in Tucson prove this desert city is anything but conventional Read.

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Plan your journey, find amazing places, and take fascinating detours with our app. And The Thing Museum embraces many of them wholeheartedly. If you're wondering if the truth is out there, the answer is yes — specifically, out there in southern Arizona, in the new The Thing Museum.

Thousands of people have done so each year, paying a buck or two to see The Thing, which until recently was housed in a shed behind the store. After wandering through mismatched displays of vintage vehicles and taxidermy oddities, visitors saw The Thing in a dusty Plexiglass case. With mystery solved and bladders emptied, they'd return to the open road.

Store owners have believed for years that the billboard star deserved better, said Kit Johnson, director of operations for Bowlin Travel Centers. A real Thing museum, certainly, one with a theme that offered an intriguing backstory to the Mystery of the Desert. But what? It only made sense to toss historical plausibility on the sacrificial tourism pyre so that a quirky new museum could rise from the ashes. Just inside the museum entrance, a bug-eyed, pistol-waving alien sits astride a tame, mind-controlled velociraptor.

The prop sets the perfect tone for exhibits that lead to the unveiling of The Thing. But the journey is more enjoyable than the destination, telling a story of meddling good and bad aliens who have been around since prehistoric times.

To ignore the tale that unfolds along dozens of placards in the 12,square-foot museum is to miss out on 90 percent of the fun except for 8-year-old Edward Morales of El Paso, who said he hated to read and just wanted to look at dinosaurs.

The displays of aliens and dinosaurs set up the story of how an advanced race of extraterrestrials arrived more than 65 million years ago to colonize i. With advanced technology and custom-made saddles, the aliens domesticated the dinosaurs and made themselves at home. When the dinosaurs rebelled just go with it , mayhem ensued and in a rather petulant move the aliens hurled an asteroid toward Earth.

Still, there are clever touches, including a World War I photo where alien spaceships can be seen flying above the battlefield. And look for the ET hiding in plain sight in a photo of military officials.