Sleeping With Aliens

The Little A'Le'Inn in Rachel, Nevada, is the iconic Area 51 motel — but it is not bookable through SherryStay, and our search found nothing bookable in Rachel at all.

Area 51 is a closed military facility. In 2013 the CIA acknowledged it in declassified documents as a test site for spy planes — not for aliens.

In Roswell, Joshua Tree, the San Luis Valley and Sedona we found hotels you can book, and they appear here as cards.

Wycliffe Well, the "UFO Capital of Australia", was abandoned after a flood at the end of 2022. It stays in this article as a story, not a recommendation.

The most important rule: UFO means "unidentified", not "alien". Rule out planes, satellites and Starlink first.

We start in the obvious place. Nevada's State Route 375 runs for almost a hundred miles through vast desert valleys, and in 1996 it was officially named the Extraterrestrial Highway — part of a tourism push built on the area's long association with UFO reports and nearby Area 51.

In the middle of almost nothing sits Rachel: a tiny settlement more than 150 miles from Las Vegas, and the closest town to Area 51. Over the years it has become a place of pilgrimage for anyone who wants to get as close as they are allowed to one of America's most mysterious places.

And here is the Little A'Le'Inn — a pun on Little Alien Inn. It is a motel, bar and restaurant that bills itself as the original Area 51 restaurant / bar / motel. It opened in 1989 as Joe and Pat's Bar and Grill and took its current name in 1991, as UFO hunters began arriving in the area. There are motel rooms, and you can also pitch a tent or park an RV.

Nobody comes here for a spa. They come for the place. At night you step outside, there is almost no artificial light, and the sky takes on a depth you rarely see above a city. Then comes the moment a light moves across it. A plane? A satellite? Military activity? Something else? That question is exactly why people come.

The Little A'Le'Inn is not currently bookable through SherryStay. We searched our catalog and did not find it, and a search for places to stay in Rachel itself returned nothing bookable with us. If you want to stay there, book with them directly.

It is worth stopping here. Area 51 is an active military facility and entry is prohibited.

In 2013 the CIA released a declassified history acknowledging the site as the place where the U-2 and A-12 spy planes were tested in the 1950s and 1960s. Aliens do not feature. Secret aircraft do.

That also offers a possible explanation for some of the strange things people have reported over the years. A secret aircraft nobody knows exists can look fairly alien as it crosses a dark desert at night.

But a possible explanation is not an explanation for every sighting. And that is exactly what turned the area into a mythology.

If Area 51 is the most secret place in alien culture, Roswell, New Mexico, is probably the most famous.

It all goes back to the summer of 1947. Mysterious debris was found in the area, and what followed became one of the biggest UFO stories in history. Over the years the familiar version took shape: a crashed spacecraft, alien bodies, and a government that covered it all up.

Here it matters to separate the story from what the official record says. A 1994 US Air Force report attributed the debris to a Project Mogul balloon, a project classified at the time, and found no evidence of bodies or of a cover-up.

That did not kill the story. Quite the opposite. Roswell became a town that lives it: aliens in shop windows, stores, museums, events and tourists. Even a complete skeptic will find it hard not to enjoy a whole town that adopted one of pop culture's great mysteries.

Where to stay? Don't force an "alien hotel" here. The story is not the room — the story is the town. Home2 Suites by Hilton Roswell is in town, on N Virginia Avenue, and bookable with us. Sleep in town, follow the history by day, and at night drive out into New Mexico's open country — because once you leave the lights behind, you understand why so many UFO stories were born in places like this.

Now for something much stranger. In Landers, about 20 miles north of Joshua Tree National Park, stands a round white structure called the Integratron. It looks a little like a spaceship that landed in the desert, but its story is even odder than its looks.

George Van Tassel began building it in 1958. According to the history the Integratron publishes itself, Van Tassel claimed the structure was based on the Tabernacle of Moses, the ideas of Nikola Tesla, and telepathic directions he received from beings from beyond Earth.

The dome, about 38 feet high and 55 feet across, is built entirely of wood, and he said it was meant for rejuvenation and even time travel. There is no evidence whatsoever that aliens supplied the plans — but that barely matters to the visit. It still operates today and holds, among other things, sound baths; check visiting times with them in advance.

Arrive in Joshua Tree and Landers and you find a whole desert culture where science fiction, art, spirituality, astronomy and UFO stories live side by side.

Where to stay? Here, look for the opposite of a city hotel: somewhere small with open land around it. Sacred Sands, in Joshua Tree, is a low, earth-toned building facing mountains and open desert, and it is bookable with us. Not for the aliens — for the sky. At night in the desert, with no buildings around, it is easy to see why people started telling stories like these here.

Colorado's San Luis Valley is another place that, over the years, became part of American folklore about unexplained aerial phenomena.

And the idea that was born there is simply wonderful: if people keep reporting things in the sky, why not build a place where you can just sit and watch?

So came the UFO Watchtower, north of Hooper. A rancher named Judy Messoline opened it in 2000. It is not an observatory and not a government research centre — it is a viewing platform in open country, with a gift shop and a primitive campground. In other words, if you really want to sleep under that sky, you can pitch a tent there.

This may be where the idea behind this article works in its purest form. Arrive, stay nearby, wait for dark and look. No promise, no 9 p.m. show, and no way of knowing whether anything will happen at all.

The UFO Watchtower is not a hotel and is not bookable through SherryStay. If you would rather have a bed than a tent, you will find one in Alamosa, the valley town: Holiday Inn Express & Suites Alamosa is bookable with us.

Sedona, Arizona, is not known only for UFOs. It is known for something broader: energy, vortexes, spirituality, red desert, sky, and stories of things people say they see or feel.

The town even has companies running dedicated night tours for sky- and UFO-watching, some with night-vision goggles, and they tend to avoid the nights around a full moon.

You can be completely skeptical about the whole thing and still understand why the place draws people looking for something out of the ordinary. At night the red rocks almost disappear. What remains is an enormous sky — and the longer you look, the more things you start to see moving.

Cedars Resort, whose sign announces Overlooking Oak Creek, is on Highway 89A in Sedona and bookable with us — a convenient base for heading out on a night tour.

UFO does not mean alien. The modern term UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, describes something that was not identified at the time it was seen. That is all.

An unidentified light can later turn out to be a plane, a satellite, Starlink, a meteor, a drone, a balloon, an atmospheric effect or military activity. Or simply something there is not enough information to identify.

That distinction is critical. "Unidentified" does not equal "alien". But "I don't know what that is" is also a legitimate answer. Sometimes there just isn't enough data.

In Australia's Northern Territory, on the Stuart Highway, about 375 kilometres north of Alice Springs, a place called Wycliffe Well operated for decades.

Lew Farkas bought it in 1985 and turned the roadhouse and caravan park into a full-blown alien kingdom, as stories of sightings in the area drew attention. Over the years it earned the nickname UFO Capital of Australia.

It sounds like the perfect place to stay for this article. Except there is a twist: you can no longer sleep there. A flash flood at the end of December 2022 closed it, and it was later abandoned and vandalised. In 2024 the ABC described it as a ghost town.

Which makes it even more interesting. A place that was once a destination for UFO hunters has itself become an abandoned relic in the middle of the outback.

Wycliffe Well is closed and cannot be booked — not through SherryStay and not any other way. It stays in this article exactly as it is: the alien hotel that has already vanished.

Almost every place in this article has something in common: Rachel, the New Mexico desert, Joshua Tree, the San Luis Valley and the Australian outback. All of them have very little artificial light compared with a big city — and that changes the sky completely.

In a city we look up and see ten stars. In the desert we discover the sky is full of thousands of points of light. Satellites cross it, meteors appear and vanish, high-altitude planes look different, and clouds can reflect light from far away.

And the human eye, especially in the dark, is not a perfect measuring instrument. Suddenly it makes sense why deserts and aliens became such a good match in our culture.

Not like a normal holiday. The hotel is only part of it, so start with the map instead.

Look for an area with low light pollution. Check the phase of the moon. Prefer a stay with open land around it over a room in a city centre. Make sure you can go outside safely at night. Pack warm clothes — even for the desert. And download a star map or a satellite-tracking app in advance.

Because if you have just seen a mysterious light, it is nice to know it was not the International Space Station before you call the newspapers.

This may be the most important tip of all. Before declaring a UFO, try to rule out a plane, Starlink, a satellite, a planet, a meteor, a drone, the headlights of a distant car, and clouds.

If nothing fits, leave the sighting exactly where it is: unidentified. It does not need a story added. The unknown is interesting enough without inventing an answer.

Especially around Area 51: don't cross a fence, don't ignore a sign, don't enter military land, and don't try to "just get a little closer". It is a military facility where entry is prohibited, and no photo is worth it.

Take the distances on desert roads seriously too. The Little A'Le'Inn itself warns drivers to go slowly at night — under 45 miles an hour — because this is open range, and cattle can be standing on the dark road.

The aliens can wait. A black cow in the middle of a dark road is a far better-documented danger.