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The Truth Is Out There
To the west of this long stretch of highway is Area 51. To the east is, well, nothing worth mentioning until you get to Utah. Pass the hills to the north and you do find civilization once again. One of the first things you come to is a sign designating Highway 375 as the Extraterrestrial Highway. Its lettering is a goofy 70's sci-fi font, and it's festooned with various stickers from visitors around the country. Most were simply place names, although a few were pretty funny; our favorite advised: "Jesus is coming, so look busy!" We paused briefly in the fading light, captured the GT-R's otherworldly presence against the otherworldly sign and, we admit, added our own bit of viral marketing to the vinyl-encrusted marker.
Drive a short distance further and you come to the small burg of Rachel, Nev. Looking like little more than a trailer-strewn wide spot in the road, the sign proclaims that the population is "Humans: 90. Aliens: ?" The centerpiece of town is the Little A'Le'Inn, an establishment that clearly knows that the little town has roughly one thing going for it. Inside were four individuals, all of whom looked human to us, and all of whom we assume are used to seeing unusual things in their remote corner of the desert. Still, they seemed impressed by the red sports car parked in front of the building, and one wanted to know how he could get a job blasting around all day in Nissan GT-Rs. Step one: Move out of Rachel.
But enough about aliens and lore. We grabbed a few souvenirs and hit the road back to that lonely stretch. You can't actually drive to Area 51 - signs in the area note that it's perfectly O.K. for the military to shoot you if you try - thus, U.F.O. aficionados point to the Black Mailbox as a key spot for seeing lights in the sky, whatever they may be. The mailbox is actually white these days, and covered in its own array of graffiti and stickers. We spent quite a bit of time near the mailbox, and never once saw anything unusual in the sky. However, we did see a lot of white, government-issue domestic sedans and vans, and one of the white buses that ferry employees to and from the site. Geek nirvana, to be sure.
With our photography and video done and the sun finally behind the mountains, we asked ourselves, which is really the worst-kept secret? This one's a tough call. On one hand, the government managed to keep Area 51 from the public's mind for decades, and even to this day nobody's really sure what the heck is going on out there. Yet since the 80s, Area 51 has been an open secret, even though it was implausibly denied by the government for a long time. Then there's the GT-R, which we all knew was coming, a fact that Nissan made little attempt to conceal; they raced it at the 2007 Goodwood Festival of Speed for crying out loud. Secrets remained, however, such as how much power it would have, what the final styling would look like, and whether it would live up to its billing. We'd even say that the GT-R still holds some secrets, since we never got to put it on a track. We're going to have to call this one a tie.
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